Only a game? Are you kidding?

So we’re in bed on a Saturday morning, doing what all coaches do, reliving the ballgame from the night before. Second-guessing decisions. Playing back the great moments. It’s pretty much like Sports Center, except that the analysts here in bed are even more fully dressed. It’s a marriage after all. An almost Amish union. No place for nudity.

“The moms ... they think you’re doing a pretty good job,” my wife says.

“What a relief,” I lie.

I know the moms she is talking about. They stand near the bleachers with their Mona Lisa mouths. They have not been especially happy since the league wisely banned “adult refreshments” in the stands a year or so ago. There were tremors for a while, and I think some tequila companies went out of business. But for the most part the moms survived this prohibition pretty well.

Now they stand by the bleachers, a little edgier than before. If you look closely, you’ll notice the way they dissect every play with their eyes. Who knows what’s going on in their heads. Half of them have MBAs. One works for Disney. Frankly, I’d rather not know.

“You guys were lucky to win,” my wife says.

See what I mean? I’d rather not know. I thought we were all one big happy family. A team. Now, after a lackluster game, she is bailing on me. When we win big, she talks about “we.” When we don’t, it’s “you guys.”

To borrow from Hemingway: The suburbs are a game -- like bridge -- except you say things instead of play cards.

“Did you see the play Jessica made?” the little girl asks.

“Jessica had a good game,” I say.

The little girl is with us now, in the big bed that’s never big enough. It’s about 7:30 a.m., and they filter in here one by one, with their saggy, mismatched pajamas and their strange ideas. The little girl. The baby. And the dog, who is easily the nicest living thing under our roof. In first place, it’s the dog. In second place, it’s the baby. There is not a third or fourth place.

“You played well,” I tell the little girl.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“That throw you made, it was awesome,” I say.

“Thanks.”

There are things we know for sure about dads. They emit more air than they take in. They think pickle relish is a vegetable. They’ve never met a boat they didn’t like.

But the strangest thing about a dad is how he can’t let go of a ballgame. When we win, I am high for two days. When we lose, I’m grumpy for a week.

“I got my players to be more Zen,” an opposing manager told me recently after a big win.

“Zen?”

“Yeah,” she explained. “I just told them not to worry so much.”

Maybe that’s the answer. Buddhism. But if I suggest that to my assistant coach, Steve, I fear he might explode.

“More ZEN?!!!” he’d scream. “Have you lost your frappin’ mind?”

“Just joking,” I’d say, and then we’d go back to playing softball the way we both prefer it. With passion, grit and a certain intensity found only among orangutans on a transatlantic flight.

“I had a nice talk with Scott last night,” my wife says.

“Kirby was there too,” says the little girl.

“I saw Jeff,” I say. “He said I had nice legs.”

“That was Mr. Morey,” the little girl explains. “Mr. Morey said you have nice legs.”

Here’s what happened. I was standing in the third base coach’s box doing my usual thing -- cussing the late afternoon sun and thinking about the beer I was going to have later -- when the parents on the opposing team started making comments about my appearance. They were trying to get in my head a little.

“Nice calves,” someone said, might’ve been Jeff, might’ve been Mr. Morey.

“Are they real?” said someone else, might’ve been Susie.

“I think they’re implants,” Jeff said.

“I like what you’re doing with your hair,” someone else said.

Yeah, right. As I’ve noted before, I have Hitler’s hairline and Woody Allen’s shoulders. And those are my physical gifts. I won’t even go into the areas I’d like to improve.

“I’m trying to work here,” I patiently explained to the opposing team’s parents. “OK? I’m trying to work.”

“Nice tush,” someone said as I turned back around. Might’ve been Layne. Nice name for a guy, right? Layne.

Like I noted, they’re just one big contest, these suburbs. Soccer. Softball. Dinner parties. Golf.

Sometimes, you just have to let go.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes .com.