Take me out of the ballgame ...

IT’S SPRING NOW, MY first season not coaching the kids. And it’s clear that I don’t miss it all that much. Don’t miss hitting a hundred pop flies into a perfect Saturday sky. Or hanging out at the pizza joint after a game, dissecting Anna’s swing.

The little girl is on the school team now, and school teams provide their own coaches, thank you very much. Parents need not apply. I don’t care. I don’t miss coaching. Hardly at all.

Not the meetings. Not the petty arguments. Especially not draft night, the biggest night of the year in any American suburb, conducted with the seriousness of the Oslo accords.

“She is not a 4, that’s all I’m saying,” a coach would bark, as if negotiating a nuclear warhead. “Megan should be rated a 3 at best.”

“I think she’s a 5,” another coach would say, just to stir things up.

Nope, don’t miss those showdowns.

And for the record, Megan was a 2.

I don’t miss racing home from work to be on time for a 5 p.m. practice -- 14 years, no speeding tickets. Thank you, God.

I don’t miss practices where only seven of 12 kids show up -- the seven who don’t really need to practice, not the five who do -- and staying an extra hour when Danny finally showed up after karate class.

I don’t miss lugging around 150 pounds of bats, balls, catcher’s masks, lineup forms, clipboards, eye black, first-aid kits, lost gloves, sweaters, math books and assorted lost jewelry. Junk in the trunk? Worse than J. Lo.

I don’t miss raking the field before a game, dust everywhere, and praying that an umpire will actually show up, and when he does that he won’t be drunk or hung over. Don’t miss that, though the umps were kind of fun to joke around with. In fact, if you want to find a guy who can keep youth sports in perspective, talk to an umpire. He’s seen it all.

I don’t miss chalking the first base line and hearing my buddy Bruce crowing, “You call that straight?”

I don’t miss the pregame talks in the dugout, going over signals, telling them to focus-focus-focus. To try their hardest, to win one for their mothers. Oh, those lovely mothers, a few of them nuttier than a bowl of cashews.

Nope, don’t miss it. Don’t miss the sunscreen on my neck, the sunflower seeds in my pocket, the smell of a new glove freshly oiled.

I don’t miss those long, sweet late-evening games when the setting sun turns the sky a shade of peach you’ve never seen before. Or putting away the base that Amanda forgot.

I don’t miss locking up the rusty equipment shed and remembering to turn out all the lights. Or the drives home after a big game when we talked about how well they’d played and how proud I was.

“Did you see Erin’s hit?” the little girl would ask.

“Did you see Abby’s catch?” I’d ask.

“Can we get ice cream?”

We live in ephemeral times, when what we do seems to last a day or two, till the next project, or deadline, or quarterly report. No one ever looked back at a business meeting and said, “Hey, that was a blast. Let’s do that again soon.” At least, not the kind of person you want to spend any time with.

In the stands, I sit now for her school games, where I make a point of not missing coaching. I sit among the other parents, second-guessing every bunt or steal. I never knew parents did that. When I coached, we won frequently, though not always. I never knew that when you lost, the parents mentally fired you.

In the bleachers with the other parents, every decision is clear cut. You don’t know that the shortstop showed up with a stomachache. Or that the catcher’s parents are having problems.

You don’t see the little things, like that Lynne is trying so hard at the plate that she’s squeezing all the color from her hands as she chokes the bat. Coaches know that. Umpires know that. Parents usually don’t.

I like it here in the bleachers. You can lean back in the aluminum seats and close your eyes and think of better days -- like when you were coaching and would’ve given a week’s salary for your kid to throw a strike right here. Right now. Strike three! Yessssssss!

Who would ever miss that? Who would miss hanging with all the other coaches, the greatest bunch of knuckleheads ever? Steve and Bill, Bob and Brian, Craig and Lorraine.

No one. Because nothing lasts forever. Not even coaching. And it’s pretty clear I don’t miss it at all.

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