Back in the day, it was not uncommon for me to lead a hockey team in both scoring and penalty minutes. On the baseball field, I was a threat on the base paths and I was renowned for spectacular, diving catches in the field.

I’ve built kitchen cabinets, unloaded trucks, poured concrete and shingled roofs for a living at one time or another. I spit a lot while doing all of these things.

I’ve been in a few bar fights and always managed to continue drinking beer when they were over. I eat red meat all of the time and I like it bloody.

I tell you, none of that means diddly this time of year. My brother wants to thrash me if he’s talking to me at all. Some guys accuse me of being a secret fan of figure skating and the Lifetime Channel. Lies, all of it.

I’m just not a huge football fan.

Man, you set yourself up for abuse when you make a remark like that. I don’t care if you bench press 250 pounds while rebuilding a truck engine, your manhood will come into question if you’re not rabid about football.

I haven’t done either of those things in recent memory, but you get my point. Scorn follows the man who dares to show indifference about football. Witness an e-mail I received from my brother a few Sundays back.

“Tell me you’re not wearing your skirt right now and that you’re getting into this game,” he wrote.

Clearly, the Patriots were on and it was a nail-biter. I was out of the house and didn’t catch it. My brother, perturbed by the silence, later wrote: “What, are you out shopping at the mall, Sissy?”

I’m pretty sure the guy likes me the rest of the year.

Truth is, I can’t remember what I was doing that particular day. I might have been hunting elk with my bare hands or eating glass or something. But no matter. I wasn’t in front of the screen or catching the game at a bar and thus, I was a lost cause to my macho comrades. They imagine me prancing around wearing an apron and wielding a feather duster. And that mall theme keeps coming back.

“Any guy I know who doesn’t get into football, I picture him walking behind his wife at the mall on Sundays with instructions not to take his eyes off the floor,” said the talented and surly sports writer Randy Whitehouse.

That hurts. I hate the mall. If I spend more than 10 minutes in one of those places, I get irritable. A half-hour and I start committing criminal offenses. I have a very manly aversion to all forms of shopping.

It sounds like I’m backpedaling, doesn’t it? It sounds like I’m on the defensive, am I right? Stop it or I’ll cry.

But seriously, I got ulcers just like everyone else during the baseball post-season. I love hockey – and the rougher the game, the better. But with football, I’ll catch part of the playoffs and tune in for the Super Bowl.

Not enough. An absolute sin to freaks like my brother.

“I find it hard to like a guy who says he’s not into football,” he remarked recently. “I mean, really, who doesn’t like football?”

Not long ago he called, breathless, sounding like a man running from a pack of wild boars. It was third and four in the fourth quarter and a comeback was at hand. My brother wanted reassurance. He wanted mutual hysteria, like he gets from me when he calls during baseball season.

He was out of luck. I was watching a horror flick. The drama on my television involved some guy getting eaten by rats instead of a late press toward the goal line. My brother gently hung up the phone. I didn’t hear from him for days. I understood completely.

The guy lives for the game. He watches the off-season trading like a stock broker. He’ll quit a job if it interferes with any part of football season. He awaits Super Bowl Sunday like most people wait for Christmas, summer or true love. When the day comes, he’s a mess. He paces the floor, suffers bouts of nausea and screams until he has no voice. I think his wife checks into a motel for the night. A diehard Patriots fan who once lived in Charlotte, N.C., he may get arrested this year.

Fact is, the majority is on his side. I’m in the minority. On Super Bowl Sunday, I’ll be watching. But I’ll have an even pulse and I probably won’t break any furniture. My friends will pretend not to know me. They’ll make jokes behind their hands about how I probably spent the day watching a Lifetime special about figure skating.

Then their wives will send them to the store for toilet paper and carpet deodorizer and the real world will come crashing back. Spring training will mark the approach of baseball season and we’ll all get along again.

And not a minute too soon. This skirt is killing me.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. He only wears tights when it gets really cold out.