“Let me play.”

“No, you’re a girl.”

“I can play.” (I thumped my glove.)

“Girls don’t play baseball.”

“I can, too. Let me play.”

“No, you’re a girl.”

I sat on the hillside for several hours, watching, asking, watching more, thumping my glove, asking again. I was unable to change the one thing that would have allowed me to play. It was 1968, and I was not quite eight.

The next day, Dad, who had observed this little drama from our adjacent house and heard my dejection at the dinner table, came with me. He offered to pitch for both teams, but only if they let me play. Having an adult pitch was too good to pass up; I got to play.

I wish I could say that ended it. It didn’t. Instead, it was weeks of proving I could play, getting slid into, thrown at, and taunted. I gave it all back. My favorite expression was, “Oh yeah? You and whose army?” The great thing about playing with boys is there’s no carryover, no hurt feelings, nor moodiness the next day.

When the leaves began to fall, and we switched to football, it was the same battle to prove myself again. However, I knew a lot less about football, so they were right when they said I didn’t know what I was doing.

I caught my first touchdown pass when I simply stayed in the end zone rather than lining up. Sports camera work wasn’t as sophisticated as it is today; there was no instant replay, and we had a 12-inch black-and-white TV with bad reception. I had no idea receivers ran down the field to the end zone. I thought they lined up there. Talk about the agony of defeat.

I loved playing baseball. I adored football. Liking football comes down to whether you like to hit and be hit. Some people do, both boys and girls, some don’t. I did. We played tackle with no equipment. Ironically, the lack of equipment meant less chance of getting injured. If you don’t have pads or a helmet, a built-in governor called pain limits your willingness to sacrifice your body.

We played hard, but no one was mean. If anyone got out of line, we’d gang-tackle them and not let them up until they got the message. We also switched teams often. If one team got too far ahead, we’d swap players to make it more even. It also made loyalties fluid, so you were careful not to get anyone too mad at you.

I practiced constantly. We all did. We’d practice falling and talk about the best way to fall, so you didn’t get hurt. If no one else was around, I’d practice falling by running and tripping myself. This led to my first existential question: can you fall the way you would being tackled by someone else if you know you’re going to fall because you’re tripping yourself?

Dad told stories of toughening himself up for football by running headfirst into trees. I tried it once at three-quarter speed, peeled the bark off my cheek, and decided that “semi-tough” was good enough for me.

We had no yard markers (or sidelines), so a first down was two complete passes in a row. If you were running from scrimmage, you had to get a touchdown in three downs.

The only one capable of that was my sister, who could outrun the whole town. Nobody could catch up. The only chance was to get a good angle and shove her out of bounds. If she was on the creek side and got her feet wet—well, these things happen.

My motto was, “You can’t make me.” My sister’s motto was, “You can’t stop me.” Even if you managed to duck under her stiff arm and grab her, she’d fight you off, pumping her knees, bending your fingers back until you let go, saying, “No way, no way,” the whole time. Tackling her was so punishing that I “slipped” in pursuit more than once. Some misery is optional.

Incredibly, having her on defense was even worse. She knew one way to tackle: around the neck. You’d catch a pass and sprint toward the invisible but agreed-upon goal line. Suddenly, your head would be separated from your body. She’d caught up.

We’d draw up plays in the dirt with our fingers, then scuff them out to protect our playbook. We had a Statue of Liberty play, the “razzle-dazzle” (a reverse), and the “double razzle-dazzle,” which cracked us up every time we ran it. We only had three or four kids per side. By the time you plot a double reverse in the dirt, with arrows every which way, and execute it, it’s hilarious.

Most of the time, the play was, “get open.” We played with a three quarter size football. Even that was too big. My hand was so small I learned to throw a spiral with just my pinky on the last lace to give it a spin. We’d spend hours practicing leading the receiver, which is hard to learn for both the receiver and the quarterback. While running away from the defense, the receiver has to run at a consistent speed, and the quarterback needs to calculate how far ahead to throw the pass so the receiver can catch it in stride.

By the time I got to high school, Physics was easy. Want to talk about leverage? Going lower to tackle gives you more leverage on the big kids. Does force equal mass times acceleration? Yep, getting hit by a big kid running fast hurts more. Right angle? An up-and-out receiver pattern. Obtuse angle? A post pattern. Gravity? Your friend or enemy depends on if you are doing the tackling or the one being tackled. Simple!

People who played sports as kids talk a lot about what they learned from sports: teamwork, persistence, and sacrifice. What did I learn in all those hours I played?

“Yes, I can.”