Last night Abby talked me into playing Wii Baseball with her. This means I really love her, because I generally stink at Wii Sports. In the real world, I have the same experience with every sport that involves a ball:

SOCCER + Asthma = Goalie (which might be okay if I could ever block the ball)

BASKETBALL: can’t dribble, can’t shoot, don’t understand the rules, hate running (see: asthma above). I can’t even play HORSE.

And don’t get me started on GOLF or TENNIS. Hitting a small ball with a long stick is completely outside of my ability.

With VOLLEYBALL, I can’t spike at all, but I’m a decent setter, so people at least let me play.

As for BASEBALL, it’s the only sport I actually played as a kid. For one year. At age nine. Girls didn’t play much Little League baseball back then (Thank GOD, for reasons you will soon understand), so it was actually fast-pitch softball.

I played left field. Not because I could catch well or throw accurately or far (I couldn’t. At all.), but because the girls in our league rarely hit out of the infield, and I had the third baseman AND shortstop between me and the ball.

And I’m SURE the only reason I was allowed to bat (not that I was begging to or anything) was because I’m a lefty. Back then, the nine-year-old pitchers that I faced were completely flummoxed by left-handed hitters. (Nowadays, they probably KILL by age nine.) Most of them could not throw even one strike for me, much less three.

Fortunately, this worked well with my strategy for batting: NEVER SWING. Since not swinging at enough “balls” gets you a “walk,” I probably got on base more than all the girls except the coach’s all-star daughter.

And when I got my inevitable walk to first base, everyone shouted “good eye!” As if I’d assessed each pitch, seen that it was not a strike, and kept myself from swinging. Yeah. In actual fact, I had stood rooted in place, just praying that a pitch didn’t hit ME.

The coach even handed me The Good Eye Award at the end of the season. (With a straight face. I admire him for that now.)

I discovered last night that my foolproof strategy doesn’t work in Wii. Since every flick of the wrist by the pitcher can be a strike, I had to swing. Wanna know how well I did?

My five-year-old struck me out almost every time. In the entire game, I got two hits. Yes, TWO. And I have no idea how or why. So I can’t even learn from the experience.

I think I need Remedial Wii.

Mii on our Wii. You can tell it's not really me because she's SMILING. And yes, she did get a home run. But she doesn't know how she did it.