In Little League, I shrank. In summer camp Wiffle Ball, I swung for glory.

This is to say I had a vivid imagination, and, like many children, cast myself as the hero. I did less of this when, in fourth grade, my family moved to the suburbs. As the new kid, I wanted nothing more than to blend in. I began to see myself as a bit player, which did not bode well when I got off the sidelines and began playing sports.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IS OUT and I’m standing on a tennis court at camp with a Wiffle Ball bat in my hands, opportunity stretching before me.

Hidden in a swath of thick woods, the camp feels far away, despite being about a mile from the center of Wayland. There are sprawling games of capture the flag, tug of war battles — activities that make you forget your social hang-ups enough that when someone yells, Ollie, ollie, oxen free, you actually believe it.

For me, it’s working: I’ve made friends I’d otherwise never talk to at school. We play games I learned from Korean friends, which involve slapping each other’s hands until welts rise. Part of me knows to savor these moments; friendships easily grow warm in summer, but, like the heat of an Atomic Fireball, quickly dissipate in September. So when you play Wiffle Ball, you swing hard.

As I walk to the makeshift home plate, I look out at the fence surrounding the court. It’s our outfield wall — our Green Monster — and all that stands between my team and the title of camp’s top Wiffle Ball crew. I press the bat’s textured plastic handle into my palms.

I can seal our fate with one swing, or by whiffing. I twirl the bat like a windmill and tap it on the far side of the plate. The hollow plastic hits the concrete like a gavel.

BEFORE CAMP, before what happened in Little League, I fought for elementary school status during recess.

Schoolyard football matches pitted fourth grade against fifth. With a shot at primacy over the school’s oldest kids, we fourth-graders took the games seriously. For me, they offered a low barrier to entry. A bigger team helped our cause, and I could catch the ball when called upon. I didn’t consider some might not have the requisite skill set, or that I only saw boys playing. But I knew an opportunity when I saw one.

My family had moved to Wayland that summer on the reputation of the school system. I loved its wooded trails and fishing holes. At school, however, I felt like a participant in a field study: Social Hierarchies Among Suburban Elementary School Youth. As we streamed down the corridor after the final bell one afternoon, a tall boy began barking orders. “Cool kids walk on this side!” he yelled. “Nerds on this side!” Stunned, I watched kids scurry into lanes and hoped to make it to the bus unnoticed.

My previous school, in Cambridge, founded by parents interested in “open education,” encouraged students to learn at their own pace and emphasized inclusivity and what it today calls “culturally-responsive learning.” Most memorable to me: We called teachers by their first names. This made me think they wore bell-bottoms and played guitar in the park on weekends.

At my new school, I learned a detailed set of social norms. Never hike up your socks; shorts should come down to the knees and feature wild neon patterns. Polo shirts are good, but only ones with a man on a horse embroidered on the breast. If you bring lunch from home, make it a sandwich that emits no odor. Learn to think critically about your appearance, because if your eyes look funny, or your face flat, you will surely have to answer for it. On this social ladder, I found myself somewhere near the bottom.

(Later, I made a few attempts at growing my measly social capital by picking on those I thought had less than me: badly teasing a friend to make sure I wasn’t the weak link of the group; or, at camp, chiding a kid I knew to be unpopular at school. There were others, and I am so sorry.)

As a new kid, I needed an identity; football was a start. A careful observer of sports, I detected an opening. When our quarterback took a snap, other boys sprinted out on long routes. I shuffled out a few yards and put my hands out. “Hey!” I’d hiss, trying not to draw attention. “Short pass! Short pass!” Two completions made a first down; a couple of lobs to me and we’d keep possession. With opponents chasing my more athletic teammates, I’d be wide open.

When our quarterback dumped me the ball, I ran a couple yards before getting tagged. Some success with the play drew exasperation from fifth-graders: “That’s cheap!” It was a weapon in our arsenal.

Eventually, I was tossed fewer passes; short routes do not make for schoolyard heroes. I continued to run the pattern, staying open in case other options collapsed. At least on the field, I had my role — at most, a shrewd tactician; at least, a viable last option. It felt like a win.

ON SUNDAYS, I sat in a tiny chair at a Methodist church a few towns over, in a space set up like a school classroom. Up front, teachers led Bible lessons in a mix of Korean and English; closest to them, the youngest children nodded along. One of the older kids, I sat at the back.

I mostly behaved during the children’s service, but when we split into study groups, I took on a different persona. I’d rock my chair back on its legs like a skateboarder performing a trick. I’d constantly crack jokes, then defy teachers when told to stop. I took it too far with one, laughing at his admonishments until he stormed out of the room.

When class ended, we’d hit the playground swings, where we swung so high the chains went slack. I dared friends to jump off farther than me. I was a ringleader, pointing the way to mischief. But I knew at school Monday, I’d be a different person.

In the 1970s, psychologist Mark Snyder coined the term “self-monitoring” to describe why people change their behavior — or don’t — in different social settings. A set of true-or-false questions measures one’s proclivity to this trait, including “Even if I am not enjoying myself, I often pretend to be having a good time,” and “I’m not always the person I appear to be.” High self-monitors try to figure out how others perceive them, and adjust their behavior accordingly. Later research differentiated two types of self-monitoring: acquisitive, which seeks approval from others; and protective, which shields a person from disapproval.

If protective self-monitoring were a sport, I’d have been a perennial All-Star. But to me, my behavior felt more like Whac-a-Mole. Push down parts of me I rarely showed at school — my joy, rambunctiousness, frustration — and they were bound to pop up elsewhere. But who would show up, and when?

THERE IS A PHOTO OF ME, throwing a baseball in our pine-needle-laden backyard. It’s all kinetic energy, arm whipping forward with such force that my body tilts over my planted foot, back leg ready to kick up behind me. I always threw as hard as I could, as if trying to pitch myself out of a tangle of cobwebs.

I brought similar intensity to batting practice, facing off against a toy pitching machine that spit out hollow plastic balls. Any ball I hit into the brush between our yard and the neighbor’s was a success. I raised the stakes in my mind: Three solid hits in a row, or a bomb will detonate somewhere.

In a recurring daydream, I had a supernatural ability to slow time. At the plate, I could hone in on a pitch, instantaneously analyze its rotation, and rope it to any spot on the field. On the basketball court, I darted to the hoop as the defense opened up in slow motion. These reveries began with me on the bench, overlooked by teammates and coaches. In the end, I’d be hoisted in the air, victorious, leaving no doubt as to who I was.

AT MY FIRST LITTLE LEAGUE PRACTICE, I squeezed my head into a helmet and practiced a swing. A kid from my school stood on the mound. Somehow, he was already understood to be one of our pitchers. Being my first Little League experience — others had played in previous seasons — I sensed the importance of impressing early.

The pitcher wound up and delivered. I swung hard; the ball rocketed over the kid’s head into the outfield — an easy double. Later, a coach pulled me aside. I’d be hitting fourth in the lineup, the cleanup spot reserved for the most powerful hitter. I swelled with pride.

As the season began, however, I heard teammates chattering about the opposing pitchers who threw the hardest. They said one had drilled a batter in the back, dropping the kid to the ground. Suddenly, I was nervous.

When I next got to the plate, I flinched as the ball left the pitcher’s hand. These pitchers — regular boys in my class — might as well have been Roger Clemens for the fear they inspired.

Timid, I struggled to hit the ball. My troubles were mystifying because of the sheer time I spent thinking about sports. I mimicked the swings of pros, even read a book by Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs on the art of hitting. My parents, who had immigrated from Korea, did not have experience with American sports, but threw me batting practice and furnished me with magazine subscriptions, books, and baseball cards. My father took me to Fenway to soak in the atmosphere. But each time I got to the plate in Little League, I shrunk.

The coaches soon dropped me out of the cleanup spot. Flailing, my instincts kicked in. During one at bat, I made a decision. Pivoting into an open stance, I slid my hand halfway up the bat and held it parallel to the ground. The ball bounced off and dribbled up the baseline — a bunt.

I probably took inspiration from Marty Barrett, the scrappy Sox second baseman who in 1986 led the American League in sacrifice bunts, though the purpose of that play is to advance the base runner, not get on base. I’d also seen professionals — usually pitchers and light-hitting position players — use bunting to get aboard. Either way, no one seemed surprised when a bunter failed to reach first base. Low expectations, low risk.

From then on, I bunted almost every time at the plate. I bunted down the first base line, or the third. I knew I could still get hit by a pitch, but bunting made it feel safer. It was as close to a defensive posture — protective — as I could take as a hitter. Opponents learned to expect it and shouted to each other: “Everyone in! He’s bunting!” I kept laying the ball down the line, reaching base sometimes.

That Little League season, I was The Bunter. I’m sure others tried talking me out of this. I could not see the other path, the one laden with failure, but maybe, at the end, hard-earned improvement. I was impatient, looking for something I thought I might never find.

AT MY CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL, I had written a story about a boy who travels through stormy seas on a mission whose stakes I don’t recall, except that they likely involved the fate of the world. A plot twist takes him to Fenway Park on a game day. The players watch as the boy carries out his critical task: Jim Rice, Barrett, Clemens. Knowing I loved stories, teachers encouraged me to write mini-books like these, bound with string and tape.

A few years later, after my Little League days, an English teacher at my suburban middle school started an after-school group for students interested in sports writing. I signed up right away; Mr. Kelley was already my favorite teacher for his dry humor and the Red Sox caps he wore before and after school.

Gathered around his desk, we discussed the Boston teams over peanuts and the cans of Coke he brought in a paper bag. We studied the heavyweight columnists of the Globe and read aloud columns we’d written at home. I wrote with zeal, but it was the banter I came back for. Mr. Kelley leaned back and listened to our opinions, affirming (“That’s what a lot of people are saying”) or gently challenging us (“You think?”). On those afternoons, he did not seem like a teacher at all.

Decades later, I learned that Mr. Kelley had been a standout hockey player at Boston State College in the 1960s, and was inducted into the UMass Boston Athletics Hall of Fame years after the two schools merged. While teaching, he moonlit as an NCAA hockey official. But he did not regale our club with tales from his playing days, or even linger on the sport of hockey, instead letting us steer the conversation.

Cola never felt so quenching, or cracking peanut shells so cool, as on those afternoons. It made me giddy to think this space existed, at school no less, where musing about sports was not only allowed, it was the point. I felt possibility. I can be a writer one day, I thought, maybe even work for the Globe. I began to see there was more than one way to swing a bat.

Talk about heroes. I owe very much to Frank Kelley and his Sports Writers Club at Wayland Middle School.

I HOLD A HAND IN THE AIR, calling timeout, and step back from the plate. Walking in a slow circle, I scrutinize the tip of the Wiffle Ball bat, as if a butterfly had landed there. My teammates wait to the side, expectant. The pitcher tosses the ball in his hand. “Come on, man,” an opponent chides. “This isn’t the Majors.”

The boy’s voice drifts in the air, just another sound of summer, like the drone of a faraway plane or insects in the tall grass. If there’s anywhere I know where I am, it’s places like this wooded camp.

By design, Wiffle Ball is a game for dreaming. The ball’s oblong perforations catch the air, making it dance and dive like a real curveball or knuckleball. The bat — hard, hollow, and thin — whips through the air. The game is unburdened of other equipment: no gloves, helmets, cleats. For me, that lightness is everything, the difference between T-shirts and shorts in summer and coats and corduroy in winter; the version of myself who shows up at school and the one here now, holding the game still as I take another practice swing.

That this is not the Majors, or even Little League, does not diminish the moment. Camp, when done right, is also for dreaming; this tennis court is Fenway Park. You’re allowed to go all out, expected to, because camp hinges on a simple calculus: It’s more fun when everyone plays. There’s responsibility in that, and belonging.

I step back into the batter’s box, wagging the bat low across the plate. In a swift motion, I snap into my stance, elbow cocked back, eyes drilling holes into the pitcher. Beyond him, the fence, my Green Monster.

Young-Jin Kim can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @youngjinwrites.