But that's my point. You sucked at those sports too 
The difference is what you're measuring against.
When you talk about going to play pickup basketball, and thought you were "pretty good", did you think you were somewhere near being a Div-1 or Div-2 basketball player? No, of course not. If you'd been playing against players of that caliber, you'd have learned pretty quickly just how bad you were. You talk about being pesky on defense... Against "hot-shots". Would you have been able to contain, for example, 2024-25 LSU guard Cam Carter, who was "only" an inch taller than you? I doubt it. He shot 42.5% from the field last season (probably low considering about 50% of his shots appear to be 3-pointers). What do you think his shooting percentage would have been if you--at your prime--were guarding him?
You misunderstand my point. I said I was used to showing noticeable progress pretty quickly in other sports, and that in golf, I didn't. How good I objectively was or wasn't is completely beside the point.
The rest of it, you've made some assumptions about me which have some merit, but I was likely better than you're giving me credit for. For a regular Joe, I was really, really good at basketball, before my health utterly crapped out on me. When I was an early teen in BR I use to go play in rec leagues with two guys who had played for LSU a decade earlier. They taught me a ton about moving the ball around and ways to help myself when you're physically inferior. I have to say, they weren't really any better than a lot of the other non-former-collegiate players who were out there. All those guys I remember being really good, although that also probably had a lot to do with how young I was compared to all of them. They were grown men, I was barely a teen. But I got a good look up close at some guys--albeit, yes, a decade earlier--who were good enough to play for LSU.
After a two-yr stint in Georgia I moved back to another part of Louisiana to finish out high school where I graduated with a guy was very good. It was a small school so I knew him pretty well, and he got a full ride to McNeese.....not exactly Kentucky or UCLA, but it's a D1 school. Since that's where I went I stayed in touch with him back then and got to play with some of the other players there too because he brought them to games outside of school (totally against their rules, I'm pretty sure....they used to talk about how pissed their coach would be if he knew they were playing games outside of their prescribed team activities). My friend was 6'8" and about 230-235....significantly bigger than me. His teammates were similar. Make no mistake, those guys were more gifted than me, but they didn't murder me or stop me from scoring or score at will on me, either. I could play with them, even if I wasn't one of the better players. Put me out against guys at "LSU" (lol at LSU for an example.....how much suckier could you get?) and the difference likely gets wider. Put me out against NBA guys, at that point I'd be a real lost cause. I got close
enough to that to have no illusions that that was me. My friend went undrafted but made a long career for himself in European leagues, playing mostly in Portugal, I think. After college I lost touch with him and now only ever see him around on Facebook.
I've recounted here before, I'm pretty sure, about the man I lived next door to, an extraordinarily gifted and athletic basketball player, and how one day when I was using his goal and he was just standing around watching me, he lept like a cat and swatted the ball clear into another yard, doing it several times until I complained it wasn't fair because I was 9 and he was a giant, and he told me "Fair? What are you gonna do when you grow up and people are still taller than you? Fair's got nothing to do with it. Better learn to shoot over me or get around me." That was an impactful day, although as I said previously, it wasn't until halfway through college that my offensive ability caught up to my defensive capability. Ball-handling in traffic was by far the part of the game that I had to work the hardest at. He, btw, routinely beat the hell out of those former LSU players at the rec-league games. He was something. I loved watching all his friends come over to his house and play....they were fun to watch even though they didn't usually let me play.
At any rate, in addition to the fact that out of high school I probably couldn't have gotten any scholarships, I had zero interest in sports even if it had been an option. I was ate up with playing music by then. But I've been on the court with college players, and it's not correct to say I have no idea what it's like or that I was in a different universe from them.
Baseball.....is almost certainly much more like you described. I was good for high school and Regular Joe games/leagues, but I've never played with any college-level players*. I've never even seen a college ace's pitch up close the way I got to play with some college-level round-ballers. Even when I was younger I'd have been K'd if for no other reason than I've never been around greatness, regardless of if I even had any talent or not. I have a cousin in Houston whose kid is in the same class as the kid of MLB ace Nathan Eovaldi, and she knows him on account of that. I'd never
actually ask for this, but I won't lie, I wish I could tell her to see if she could have them over some off-season, invite me, and just have him whiz one by me.......I know it's sick, but I would love to see one of his pitches go hopeless, helplessly by me, just to see if the despair is tangible.
* I did live down the street from the 3rd baseman of LSU's 1993 CWS team, and I gave him an LSU hat to get signed by as many of his teammates as he could when they won. I never got that hat back. Damn him.....stealin' a kid's hat like that.
