am not the biggest sports person . Saying this is a bit like saying Michael Jackson isn’t entirely normal, that Johnny Depp looks okay in a suit. What is it with me and sports? Why did we go so wrong together? As a kid, I was a tiger on the soccer field. I once knocked out the front tooth of a fabled third-grade forward as she swept in for a goal. I was a decent gymnast, who could drop more than a few back handsprings, and I was strong enough to place second in our elementary school shot-put toss.

Sadly, I suspect it all comes down this: I developed early. Like, early. Like, back when I knocked out that poor girl’s front tooth, I was practically lactating. And the whole stupid trauma of it made me want to get as far away as I could get from flimsy little-league tops and locker rooms. It was bad enough to have boobs at nine years old. No way anyone was gonna snap my bra at halftime.

It didn’t help that I grew up in Texas, ground zero for footballphilia. I began to see the world through the prism of a John Hughes film: the jocks versus me. This is a little bit ridiculous, if you consider my best friends in high school. One of them was the captain of the basketball team. One of them was the captain of the volleyball team. They are both still dear friends of mine. Oh, and also: My boyfriend was a cheerleader. How effing subversive is THAT?

Anyway, I managed to turn off sports for decades, like it was an annoying sales call at dinner. Basketball? Can’t talk, we’re eating now. Baseball? Sir, we’d like you to take our name off the list. I behaved as though sports had harmed me in some way. (Well, maybe it had. There was this one horrible episode, in which I tried out for girls’ seventh-grade basketball and was the only one who didn’t make the team. I wonder now, perhaps full of adult ego, if it wasn’t an adminstrative error.)

And so I arrive in New York. And New York is a sports city. And as it turns out, many of the people here whom I love, and who love me, are Sports People. They have season tickets. They play in fantasy football leagues. They watch ESPN. For lack of a better way to say it, THEY GIVE A SHIT. And suddenly, it seems kind of interesting for me to give a shit, too.

Don’t get me wrong: It will be a cold day in hell before I follow sports stats. If I start to write in any serious way about Alex Rodriguez, or Derek Jeter, please inform the Powers That Be that robots have invaded my brain. But earlier this week, I went to a Knicks game. And it was fun. And then tonight, I went to a Mets game. And it was fun. (On a sidenote, NY lost both times, which means I am a Bad Omen for my paranoid superfan sports friends.) And both these experiences fed my journalistic curiosity, brought me closer to understanding what it’s like to devote yourself to a sports team, to wring your hands during the ninth inning.

Also, they made me feel a little bit more like a New Yorker.

As I walked into Shea Stadium tonight, colder than it ever should be in April, I handed my ticket to an old, redfaced Irishman in a puffy jacket.

“Welcome back,” he said to me, and winked.

I had been there before. But for the first time, I figured I might come again.