When I was 12 years old, during a Little League game, I made a memorable and embarrassing moon-shot of a throw from center field toward home plate. I think ten runs scored while the catcher was waiting for the ball to come down. I can still remember the look on my second baseman’s face.

So, I worked on technique. By the time I reached high school, I could throw balls – snowballs, baseballs, kick balls, dodge balls – with power and accuracy. When I was a junior in high school, during a physical education class, I threw a regulation softball 70 yards. Not Major League Baseball caliber and, still, pretty good.

I was 20 years old the first time I really hurt my throwing shoulder. I was serving in a tennis match with, apparently, bad form and I damaged my rotator cuff muscles. To make a long story short, I did enough of the exercises over time that I wasn’t in pain… but I had limited use of the shoulder. A throwing motion of any kind was weak and painful. So, I stopped playing tennis. I stopped playing catch. I stopped throwing snowballs. I stopped.

Fast forward to recent times: In the gym, lifting some weights, I injured my right shoulder again. The moment was extraordinarily painful, like a knife digging deep into my right shoulder.

Both of the surgeons I consulted said, “physical therapy, not surgery”.

My physical therapist does a lot of work with baseball players. When he asked, “What are your goals here?”, I said,” I want to be able to throw a baseball 60 feet (the distance between bases on a Little League baseball diamond) with some zip on it.” We’ve been working on that. It’s a work in progress.

So, a couple of weeks ago, out for an afternoon walk, I happened to walk past the Harvard University baseball field; the baseball team was practicing. On the grass outside the first baseline fence there were several baseballs. I thought I would pick them up and return them to the field.

One of the Harvard University players inside the fence held up his glove and called, “Over here!’ He was, maybe, 30 yards away. So, without much thought, I picked up a baseball and threw it. A racoon could have done better. The ball went a little more than half the distance to the ball player.

He looked amazed. I felt momentary embarrassment… and then I laughed aloud. It had been so long since I’d thrown anything with my right arm that I had no muscle memory of what it’s like to throw a ball. How hard do you throw to deliver a ball 30 yards? How much effort do you put into that? I had no muscle memory.

I picked up another ball and threw it toward him. It just cleared the fence and dropped a few feet in front of him. He put up his glove again to give me a target. The third time was the charm. My throw reached him … with a mini-moonshot ball trajectory that would’ve made the 12-year-old me wince. Not pretty.

Never mind. The objective was to throw a baseball. There’s more work to do. And it was a shock to understand how much shoulder muscles memory I’d lost by not using them.

Nick Miller is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. He assists banks and credit unions to generate more and more profitable relationships, faster, with business clients, their owners, and their employees through better sales strategies and execution. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.