Before I began focusing on music, my primary interest was sports. The one surviving 1968 Little League statistics book shows me batting .735 with 8 home runs in 62 times at bat at the age of 12. My veteran baseball coach enthused how he had never seen anyone attack the ball the way I did when batting.

Actually, my best sport was football, where I played quarterback. Word of my abilities reached the Varsity football coach, and he called me out of seventh grade class one day, imploring me to join the football team so I would be ready for his team when I reached high school. However, I had already determined that I become too big and strong to engage in tackle football, having nearly reached my full height of six feet at the age of 13, and being mindful of the uncommon physical strength I possessed, not to mention concern for my own welfare.

Basketball was my favorite sport, but a severe ankle sprain that took many months to heal, followed by breaking my other ankle the first day back, ended my competitive basketball days because I had lost my greatest asset, which was an unusual aggressiveness, the injuries bringing a compromising tentativeness.

After reading here, a cherished friend from summer camp sent this: "I’ve regaled you numerous times of the sound the basketball made off your fingertips as your released a jump shot (over me), in absolutely perfect form. Take it from someone with experience playing, broadcasting at its highest collegiate levels, talking shop with iconic 3-time national champion retired UConn coach Jim Calhoun, and coaching, your jump shot was spot-on, picture perfect! (Joe Fremont)

Eli Robinson and Michael Robinson at Jones Beach in 1961 when Michael was five and his father was 30 or 31. Michael's father was an expert handball player, and a chess wizard.

Most fortunately, I soon found that transferring my physical energies in another direction, music, was just as exciting, existing in the unique realm in-between the corporeal and metaphysical worlds.

I recall being bitterly disappointed that Little League year because my family left for a California vacation even though my team, located in my home town of Wantagh, Long Island, New York, had reached the Little League World Series for our division. My feeling at the time was I was going to hit even better in the championship games.

"Forfeit" is misspelled, of course, and there are a total of 5 doubles rather than 4.

- Michael Robinson, August 2021, Los Angeles

© 2021 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

Michael Robinson is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, jazz pianist and musicologist. His 170 albums include 150 albums for meruvina and 20 albums of piano improvisations. Robinson has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College and California State University.