Swish

The worst hours of my life were supposed to be the most carefree, fun times. My father would come home from work, dig out the baseball and gloves and call to me, "C'mon! Let's toss a few!" And for an endless period of time, my father and I tried over and over to throw the ball and  catch the ball. Unsuccessfully on my part, need I add.
It did not help that my eyesight was rapidly deteriorating. At one awful stage, my parents were resigning themselves to my eventual complete loss of vision (an event that did not happen.) It also did not help that I was shy and bookish and prone to numerous illnesses.
The net result was a long aversion to sports. I was relieved when I was the last to be chosen for whatever team. I would stand in the outfield (why the outfield? I dunno.) daydreaming or dreading that someone might hit a ball my way. I would go to school sporting events convinced my school would  lose (and they usually did so!)
At various irregular intervals, I got involved in some esoteric sport such as karate or fencing. I was deeply committed at one point to hiking, if you take a broad definition of "sport."
But it was only when the physical became less possible for me due to increasing disability that I fell into my current fascination with sport, specifically baseball/ (Go Red Sox!) At the same time, I recognized how dysfunctional most sports can be.
This is not just about the inevitable physical wear and tear that is part of any sport. Not just boxing and football, but the damage that happens to any athlete, and that results in retirement from most sports by age 40 or so. This is also idealizing conflict as a form of entertainment and therefore acceptable as a way of dealing with differences even in most social settings. And we even go into the complicated ways in which sport is used as a pretext for making money (the big sports organizations as non-profits? really?)
But most of all, it has taken to recent years to address the homophobia implicit in many sports organizations. Not that there were no gay players! But as in society at large, we preferred not to see or acknowledge that these men and women  might be other than the Frank Merriwether stereotype of the wholesome straight-no, no, chaste! role models we sought.
So what does society do when it is faced with the eroding of the gay stereotype, with the image of manly/womanly members of the LBGTQ community? What do parents do when they have a son who has no interest in the traditional macho things? What do they do when a daughter shows no so-called "feminine" tendencies?
Some advice: don't take them out to the back yard to play a game of catch. Doesn't work.