Go ahead: Give up any of your talents for a year and try to practice them with the same confidence, authority and precision right away.

Finding the plate, recovering your rhythm and trying to coax those four or five fateful miles per hour out of your fastball after a complete reconstruction of your pitching elbow isn’t exactly like riding a bicycle.

Tip Fairchild climbed back on the horse Wednesday night for the Double-A Corpus Christi Hooks. And yes, he was bucked and thrown and perhaps kicked a little bit.

Win, lose or be shelled, though, it was simply a step the Monmouth Academy and University of Southern Maine product needed to take.

“I just didn’t execute any pitches,” Fairchild told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times after surrendering eight earned runs in one-plus inning of a 13-10 loss to the Arkansas Travelers.

The good news is that Fairchild, 24, didn’t report any physical discomfort after his first trip to a Double-A mound in 13 months.

Fairchild underwent Tommy John surgery last spring after only two starts with the Hooks.

One full year is a typical rehabilitation period after the procedure, which has saved hundreds of pitching careers since it was first performed on its Major League namesake in the 1970s.

The pitcher’s father, longtime Oak Hill High School baseball coach and current athletic director Bill Fairchild, said that Tip has been told to expect up to 16 months before the velocity on his pitches will completely return.

Working with strict pitch counts and under watchful eyes, Fairchild spent April in extended spring training at the Houston Astros’ minor-league camp in Kissimmee, Fla.

Evidence of the brutally honest, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world inhabited by professional athletes: Fairchild was booed by some of the Hooks’ patrons as he departed after failing to retire any of four batters in the second inning.

Fairchild didn’t mince words with his self-appraisal after yielding four hits, three walks and two hit batsmen. His work translated to a 72.00 ERA.

“I don’t think I executed one pitch the right way or how I’ve been working on it down in extended spring training,” he said to the local paper. “I don’t know if it was nerves or being a little too pumped up, but that’s not how I pitch. I’ve got to find myself and go over some things this week before my next start.”

The severe but now-treatable injury provided the first major roadblock of Fairchild’s baseball life. He was rapidly ascending, emerging as one of the top prospects in the Houston system when the elbow ills struck.

Fairchild led the Astros’ minor-leaguers in several major categories in 2006, logging 14 wins and 142 strikeouts in 173 combined innings with two of the team’s Class A affiliates.

He was 0-1 with a 10.29 ERA in two 2007 appearances with Corpus Christi prior to the injury.