Chris Erskine: February in California

I can feel February in my hamstrings. Raked up a million olives the other day, chased around a trillion leaves. Our backyard has more olives than all of Greece. After a couple of hours with them, I start to fantasize about gyros and saucer-eyed girls I knew in college.

I can feel February in my shoulders too. Chicago is still digging SUVs out of snowdrifts, and here we are beginning baseball practice on fields as green as poker felt.

We started the 8-year-olds with the basics of the game — “This, men, is a baseball” — and progressed all the way to, “This, men, is a glove.” We’re taking it slowly this year, letting the game unravel little by little before their eyes. Like spring itself.

In California, April comes in February, which is a nice quality in a state. A sucker for seasons, I envy the petticoats of snow back East, but I’m prone to over-romanticizing that kind of stuff. I’m a Californian now, like Reagan, hammering at the land, knocking back its scratchy beard, gathering up its olives. Last time I counted, there were 50 states and only about three or four I’d prefer: Montana, Alaska, Maine. Maybe Virginia. Maybe Michigan.

I’m pretty sure no one was playing baseball in any of those places this week, so I’ll stay here for now. Besides, the little guy is already enrolled in baseball ($150), where I am managing his team of callow second-graders.

One of the stories I will do someday soon is on how youth sports leagues seem to be struggling to fill coaching positions these days. Before the economy tanked, you’d have a whole bunch of knuckleheads offering to lead teams in soccer, basketball or baseball. Now, you just have a few of the knuckleheads, la creme de la knuckleheads. One of them is me.

“Truth is, a lot of these dads shouldn’t even be coaches,” I told a friend recently.

“A lot of them shouldn’t even be dads,” he said.

Fair enough. We live in a world where you need a permit for everything but fatherhood. There’s not even a test.

Question 1: Do you have a problem giving everything you earn to other people?

Fortunately, our 8-year-old league seems to have a good crop of dads. More and more in life, all you ask is a certain degree of reasonableness from people — behavior without surprises or agendas. I’m pretty sure we’ll get that from the Pinto League coaches. Over the course of the season, I don’t expect more than a couple of fistfights and arrests.

It’s on such idealism my team begins its season.

“You’re a good coach, Dad,” the little guy says as we head off to our first practice.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” I warn him.

“OK,” he says.

At the field, the players show up one at a time, carrying bat bags bigger than they are. Their moms or dads are with them — at 8, almost none of them drive — and you can feel the gamma rays of impossible expectations as the season gets underway. They see me, not knowing whether I am the coach or the guy who runs the riding mower.

“You? You the coach?” they ask suspiciously.

“Welcome to the team,” I say.

“I have lacrosse practice in an hour,” one kid warns.

“Me too,” I say.

My buddy Scott, also a coach, tells of the time a player showed up for his first practice, climbed inside his oversized bat bag and zippered it shut.

Or maybe that was me. The good news? Firefighters had me out of there in less than two hours.

Truth is, I have a lot in common with 8-year-old boys. Like them, none of my pants really fit. Like them, I get drunk on sunshine and open fields.

Like them, I always have something weird in my jeans pocket: a yo-yo, a lizard’s foot, the spring from a mechanical pencil. Like them, I don’t trust girls.

Essentially, I am a larger version of them. I have more in my 401k plan and more power tools. Basically, those are the only things that separate my players and me. Oh, and I do a bit more yard work.

We chat a little — “You guys want nicknames?” “YESSSSSSS!” — then loosen up our guns (arms). We work on the most basic stuff: how to hold a baseball gently, like an egg. How to “put the lid on” when you field a grounder.

Baseball, like life, is a thousand little skills strung together — some easy, some humbling, all with lots of funny bounces.

We don’t tell them which ones are which. It’s February. They have plenty of time to discover all that for themselves.

chris.erskine@latimes.com