In the late 1940s and early ’50s, where I grew up, baseball was our favourite game, not so much at school but in makeup games on diamonds in nearby Gibbons Park or a block or so away on the baseball diamond at the old Huron College in London, Ont.

I was a middling player and a better pitcher than a hitter. We used to play for hours, especially on summer evenings, when games lasted till when we could barely see the ball.

No one kept score, except the standard three strikes and out. Home runs sometimes meant broken windows in nearby homes, for which we got into a lot of trouble with neighbours. They complained to the dean, who cautioned us several times before throwing us off the college’s diamond  – fair enough.

We used to sneak back onto the diamond and when we heard the tinkle of faraway glass, we knew it was time to skedaddle and later claimed it was someone else. The dean knew better and so did we.

In those days my favourite professional team was the Cleveland Indians but when our family moved to Boston in 1992, we switched to the Red Sox, even if they usually broke the hearts of locals every post-season, by losing to the dreaded and hated New York Yankees.

In the “Philosopher’s Stone,” the first in the Harry Potter series, the world was introduced to the body contact game of quidditch.

Here, players flew on broom sticks and scored goals by whacking the quaffle ball through the opposition’s goal at the end of the playing field in the sky. Harry Potter’s job as seeker was to catch the small erratic flying “Golden Snitch.” If caught, you usually won the game.

From a neurophysiological perspective what would catching a fly ball in the outfield or the snitch in quidditch look like?

Let’s begin with catching a fly ball. From the moment the outfielder hears the crack of the bat and sees the ball, the outfielder’s brain begins to compute the ball’s trajectory and where the player needs to go to catch it.

Keeping his eyes squarely on the ball and constantly moving them, his head and neck, while running to intercept the ball involves highly complex, co-ordinated movements.

In the case of a deeply hit ball, it might even require the outfielder to turn his back to the ball and, while running, continue to keep his eyes on the ball and maintain his balance, and near the end, reach out with his glove to catch the ball.

Then, within a second or two, he must turn to face the diamond with the ball in his throwing hand and assess where to throw the ball if there are runners on base.

Such complex sequences are learned via thousands of repetitions, each one a little different but still variations on a common motor program or sequence of programs involving the sensory-motor and premotor cortex, the oculomotor system, vestibular system, basal ganglia, the cerebellum and motor nerve cells located from the brainstem to the sacral spinal cord.

The motor memory for such complex tasks resides in the motor cortex and cerebellum.

The neural structures involved in quidditch would be similar but the challenge much greater because unlike baseball in which the ball follows a predictable and trackable trajectory, the snitch is erratic.

It can stop on a dime or swerve in any direction and the seeker must follow, while avoiding opposition players who would love to knock him off course or even off his broomstick.

In humans it takes a year or more to progress from lifting the head, rolling over onto their tummy, crawling, sitting, standing and eventually walking.

They’re all hard wired and depend on progressive maturation of the nervous system and endless practice but no formal teaching. Witness some animals such as newborn horses, which manage to stand, albeit wobbly, within minutes of birth.

Complex novel motor activities, such as dancing, tennis, skiing and gymnastics are best learned in the teens or early 20s, with the help of coaching and mimicking what the more expert do and, of course, training, training and training hundreds if not thousands of times.

It is not so easily learned from scratch much beyond the late 20s to 30s.

Learned well in the early years, many retain enough skill into their later years to safely enjoy sports such as skiing and tennis but it’s a rare person who continues to have the requisite timing, strength and flexibility to continue with gymnastics much past their 20s. And for quidditch, not at any age for me.

Dr. William Brown is a professor of neurology at McMaster University and co-founder of the InfoHealth series at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library.