As my plethora of readers have come to know, I wasn’t much of an athletic juggernaut in high school.

By the way, I can say plethora of readers because I have personal confirmation that that numbers has risen to 10.

I’ve often related, joked [potato/potatoe] that my lithe 5 foot-nothing, one-steak-away from 100 pound frame fell far short of ruling the athletic playing fields. My spirit was willing, my body was — 5-10, 100 pounds [on a good day, late in my senior year].”

I grew up in a small town as I’ve stated in past installments of “I Was A Lot Cooler Than I Really Was,” and while I was rarely good —  at anything — I still played on most teams.

Football was a chore because for the longest time the football was bigger than my head and while I was a force in Saturday afternoon backyard football, that rarely, if ever translated into full-contact football.

Basketball was better, but again — ball/head scenario.

Baseball was my jam. Baseball is an interesting sport. A little more cerebral than most sports, it’s also a game that doesn’t really require a certain height or size to play. Bats are easy enough to come by and aside from the catcher and perhaps outfield, the other positions were relatively convenient for budding superstar athletes such as myself.

I could digress more into baseball, but we have to backtrack a little to basketball.

I’m not sure when the recent nostalgia actually began. Did it begin all the way back at the beginning of this season? No, not really. The beginning of the season is rarely so exciting.

Was it the first picture of Austin’s Duoth Gach dunking? No, again. Duoth’s dunks make for great pictures, but he does it — a lot — and I could never dunk.

Not in a game anyway. On our garage where the net was lower, the ball smaller and I had the garage itself to run up — you bet.

Was it when the Lyle-Pacelli girls punched their way to the state tournament just last week?

No. I’m not sure we ever came close to sniffing the state floor as basketball players. We were okay if I remember right, but we were never in danger of state tournament glory so I can’t really relate.

I think perhaps the nostalgia takes over when the first bench players come off the bench.

I was a bench player. Not the first, nor the second or even the third. I was a Minute Man.

A Minute Man is that kid ready to claim glory when the game is put out of reach one way or the other. If your team is down a whole bunch or up a whole bunch and there is no danger of your talentless self losing the game on some notion of being a hero.

I was that kid the student body waits for, eagerly waiting to chant your name as the game winds down.

I had no special moves, no especially fit claim to fame. There was no dribbling between my legs, no behind the back or no-look passes. There was only my adept comparison’s to Pistol Pete Maravich.

And by that I mean that every time I shot, the ball had to come from my hip like a pistol. I wasn’t strong enough to shoot like a normal player. I was more of a heave-and-pray.

Heave the ball after cocking my scrawny guns at my hip, preferably when there wasn’t a defender within 10 feet. And pray the ball didn’t airball.

Nobody wants to hear the airball chant.

My pinpoint accuracy allowed me certain moments of glory. I can boast of hearing the crowd roar when I hit a three-pointer. The underdog roar is pretty powerful and I can confirm that I may have thrust a fist in the air a couple times.

I only had a minute sometimes to make my mark past the wire-frame of my body and the entirely too-short shorts.

So, no I’m not entirely sure where the nostalgia came from. It’s not like I had a lot of memories of any kind of profound impact. Maybe it was the game itself. Playing in front of people from the community you represented.

I suppose anything is possible, however, I also suppose it’s entirely possible that I’m 44 and find myself wishing for a small amount of the glory teams like Austin and Lyle-Pacelli are experiencing right now.

Oh, to be young again, hitting that hard court with visions of winning three-pointers in your head. Had I only been the athlete my dad was in school. Starter in three sports — a stand out! A hero to a son that couldn’t quite compare.

But hey, don’t feel sorry for this aging want-to-be Pistol Pete.

I may have been a bench warmer, but I was better than most.

I was a starting bench-warmer.