Missing: middle-aged father of four

DEAR EDITORS,

I just wanted to let you know that my husband will not be filing his column this week. Before you go screaming off into the night, let me explain what happened:

About eight weeks ago, he is sitting on the couch, watching “Finding Nemo” for the 500th time. Our toddler wasn’t even around. My husband is just hooked on “Finding Nemo,” no pun intended.

“I’ve always liked seafood,” he explains and shoves another sardine into his face.

Anyhow, he’s sitting there watching this fish movie when the phone rings. Like a lot of passive-aggressive men, he ignores the phone at first, then throws a shoe at it. I understand you have a lot of this type of person at his newspaper.

“Hello?” he finally says. “Oh, hi, Terry ... “

Now, as you’ve probably realized, my husband can’t say no. All you have to do is give him a little compliment to start out the conversation, then when you ask him to do something, he’s putty. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve gotten him to do just by telling him how much he looks like Richard Dreyfuss. I think writers become writers because they haven’t had enough compliments in their lives.

So Terry asks him to coach my daughter’s all-star team, which apparently is a big honor in our little community. I guess standing around dusty softball diamonds in 100-degree heat must be pretty darned fun.

“Hey, Lasorda, you really want to do this?” I asked him after the phone call.

“I guess someone has to,” he says.

Secretly, he was doing handsprings. After 20 years I can tell when he’s excited about something, which is pretty much all the time. This is, after all, a man who still watches cartoons.

“It’ll just be a few weekends,” he promised.

“Of course,” I said.

Two months later, he is spending every night at practice and every weekend at a tournament in some little cow town outside Los Angeles. From what I’ve been able to tell, softball tournaments are usually held in places with biker bars and lots of abandoned gas stations.

“You’re not coming?” he asks as he gets ready to go.

“Not this time,” I say.

I explain that if I wanted to spend weekends near biker bars, I could’ve stayed in Florida and married Spam, my high school boyfriend. Instead, I hitched my star to Lasorda here, and there hasn’t been a dull moment since.

“You could be a little more supportive,” he said last week.

“And you could come home once in a while,” I told him.

Now, he and our youngest daughter are off at the state finals in some little desert outpost. San Diego, I think. Or it might’ve been Needles. What they do, apparently, is save the most miserable locations for late summer.

“Did you pack my lucky slippers?” he asked before leaving.

“Do you even have lucky slippers?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

I’m pretty sure he is suffering from chronic heatstroke. You know the Irish. The sun bores right into their frontal cortex. It’s as if they have no skull.

My husband says this is the best team he has ever coached and that they could go all the way to Nationals. Where’s that? Wichita, I think. Or Oklahoma City.

We have at least two friends going to France this summer but I’ll be in Oklahoma City, begging some clerk at a Dairy Queen to make me a salad out of the little clump of brown lettuce he has left in the kitchen.

“You know what this is about?” he told the team before they left. “World domination, that’s all. Total world domination.”

I hope, when my husband returns from taking over the world, that you’ll accept him back. The cocker spaniel has some abandonment issues. My friend Susy says he needs to see a doggy shrink. Like everything in L.A., doggy shrinks aren’t cheap. Meanwhile, the house payment is due, and the car bills keep piling up.

My husband says that any day now they’re bound to make him editor, and then the money will really pour in. He says I’ll never have to keep the thermostat at 80 again, as if he’s promising diamonds.

“Eventually, they’ll probably make me publisher,” he tells the kids.

“Really, Dad?” they ask.

“Absolutely,” he says.

I think that’s just what journalism needs right now, a twitchy little guy in cargo shorts and a “Just Win” T-shirt, mustard stains all down the front.

His leadership skills are a little shaky, and he doesn’t really have a firm grasp on how Congress works, and other intricacies of major American institutions. But he’s always been an eager learner -- once you get him out of bed.

Please send any new job offers directly to the house.

Gratefully,

A softball widow

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