Have you ever made a dedicated effort to learn to catch? I find that the limiting factors are usually (a) a suitably easy ball to start with, (b) the modesty to use it, and (c) a patient enough partner to make easy throws to you. If you are of average klutziness for a geeky engineer, you can probably learn to catch, say, a volleyball in about three hours. Start with a small beach ball or medium-sized kickball, and work your way down to smaller and harder balls. Don't be afraid to make incredibly easy throws with easy balls at short distances for about 100 reps before moving on to an incrementally harder exercise. The nice thing about catching is that a 'rep' takes anywhere between 1-5 seconds, so you can fit in a surprisingly large quantity of reps in a 15 minute practice session.