The first time I stepped onto a racquetball court was in 1977.

I had found my game.

It was fast and even violent, yet required some finesse.

It matched my temperament for a good workout too. I find machine exercises hopelessly boring and never was much for just taking off running for no apparent reason. As a youngster if you put a ball in my hand and pointed toward a goal or a base runner I was generally motivated to get busy.

I played racquetball steadily through the 70’s and was a force to reckon with in the tiny pond that was my club. But ultimately I was transferred to a smaller town that had no facilities and soon I lost interest.

That interest has been rekindled lately, to the immediate sorrow of every bone in my body. People don’t play racquetball so much anymore. I’m finding out why.

Virtually every morning these days, Kris, my fellow racquetball partner-tormentor and I meet at Gold Star Gym. We put on sweat pants and tee shirts and approach court number two...where the pain lives.
For an hour or so each morning we lock ourselves inside there and scream a lot. Well, I scream, Kris laughs a lot.

Fortunately the echo dynamics in a closed racquetball court are such that it is difficult to identify any particular syllable. We’ve dodged more than one bullet by explaining to the lady’s aerobic class down the hall that what may well have sounded like cursing was just us congratulating each other on our prowess spoken in our spirited but native dialect of Tlinglit.

I wish I could say it was the pain of a good, honest workout that drove me to Eskimo epithets. It isn’t. Not for me at least. It is the pain of a foolish man. It is a level of pain reserved only for those of us old enough to remember David Crosby with no bags under his eyes. There is a price to pay for being old enough to own that vision and you have to be that old to hurt yourself this badly.

See the trouble is that in my head I’m still 30 years old. I still see the ball well, despite the fact that it frequently comes in at a trajectory that divides itself across the bifocal line in my glasses. This has the unsettling effect of making the top half of the ball two inches in diameter and sharply focused while leaving the bottom half about four inches in diameter and fuzzy. It resembles half a blue cantaloupe.

As I move toward it with what I imagine are graceful strides, I visualize the entire sequence and its consequences well before the ball arrives. In my mind’s eye, the rifle shot explodes from my racket and the little blue ball still chips paint off the wall as it flattens against the surface, rebounds, and hurtles toward my opponent. In my vision fear strikes his heart and unmentionable muscles tighten in terror as the ball zips past him while he wags his racket in futility at the streaking blue tail of the little rubber comet that is my cross court forehand.

That is what happens in my mind.

That is how it was in 1977.

The sad picture on the court today is something less.

My imagined gazelle-like strides jar my teeth as I come down heels first in what turns out to more closely resemble a penguin running from a burning building clamping a cash register between slippery flippers.

When I draw back my racket with the ball focused sharply in my steely gaze, every muscle in my arms and chest go taut, then freeze there in a rare display of galloping rigor mortis...or something.

While trying to marshal my arms into action, I stride into the ball ready to deliver the death blow. Just then I turn my ankle, the ball takes an unanticipated hop, hits my shoe, bounces straight up and leaves a blue rubber streak on the end of my nose as it skids over my head, down my back and trickles unharmed into the corner of the court.

The ball makes this really nasty little squeaking sound when it skids over my forehead. I wish it wouldn’t do that. It’s as if it knows the safest place in this world for a racquetball is bounding toward me in lazy loops at knee height. So it giggles.

I’m afraid my days of striking fear into the heart of an opponent are over, unless you count the drive-thru guy at Krispy Kreme.