Pleading guilty, by reason of sugar

To the good people in Aisle 3, Rows V and W: From the bottom of my tiny, baseball-shaped heart, I am sorry for what happened the other day. Sorry for the giggle fits and the carnage. We thought it’d be nice, you know, to take the T-ball team to a real game, at a real ballpark, to cap off their magical-maniacal season.

For nothing bonds fathers and sons like baseball.

And, as you well know, baseball loves nothing so much as kooks and oddballs, which this T-ball team has in spades. No disrespect. There are few creatures as lovable and maddening as a 6-year-old boy. When they travel in packs, it can be a real floor show.

Big mistake. Sorry.

So I apologize for all that happened on that otherwise perfect day -- sunny, with a hint of heaven. In looking back, what really worked against us is that the game lasted four hours -- or roughly the length of a flight from LAX to Chicago. To keep a team of T-ballers entertained for four hours is more than you can ask of almost any sport.

And you have to admit that for the first two innings, we had the lads under total control. Then the dads seemed to lose focus, and here’s what I think happened next:

Coach Italia had a beer and maybe Coach Nava too. The game got interesting, which means we dads paid more attention to what was going on down on the field than what was happening right beside us in Aisle 3, Rows V and W. The narcissist nearby in the micro-miniskirt and the killer tan didn’t help the situation either.

The real turning point in the game, I think, was when the Scribner boy came back from the snack bar with a big bag of cotton candy -- which is good for kids, at least the cotton part. The candy portion of cotton candy affects them like little wads of nitroglycerin.

After a few mouthfuls of cotton candy, the Scribner boy was off like a 3-2 favorite in the Preakness.

His cellmates joined him, and before long, we were a big quivery mass in Aisle 3, Rows V and W. The little guy (my son) was thirsty, so I gifted him a few sips of my Coke, which looking back now might’ve been a mistake. As his mother constantly reminds me, “HE CAN’T HAVE SODA!” Which makes him crave it all the more.

In the fourth inning, he flies out of his seat like a North Korean rocket.

In the sixth inning, he lands back in his seat, which is when things really got hairy, since the Dodgers finally changed pitchers -- for some reason, that didn’t hold the boys’ attention like we’d hoped.

To pass the time, one of our little Einsteins made a bomb consisting of an empty water bottle and his own saliva. That may explain the smoke and the white-hot flash. No biggie. The Dodgers report that they can replace the seat and most of the concrete beneath it.

In the seventh inning, you may recall, the cry went up: “TOMMY’S TONGUE IS BLEEDING! TOMMY’S TONGUE IS BLEEDING!” The sight of blood seems to affect the boys like gin, but it proved to be a false alarm. Tommy was just doing something weird with ketchup.

To be fair, there were several periods of solitude, where the boys sat back quietly. In the fourth inning, that period of calm lasted 90 seconds. In the eighth inning, they went almost two full minutes, till someone decided to have a tickle contest. To 6-year-olds, laughing till you pee is a sport unto itself.

Whew, that was unfortunate. We also regret that we happened to be sitting amid, what I understand, were members of a Dodgers fan club, folks who take their baseball pretty seriously.

Thank heavens for folks like you, for whom baseball is a passion. Most of you can tell me in a heartbeat not only who gave up the home run to Bobby Thomson (Ralph Branca, that’s too easy) but who was also warming up in the bullpen with Branca that infamous day (Carl Erskine, no relation). Bad choice. I’ll never forgive Chuck Dressen either.

Anyway, I hope we haven’t turned you off to such pursuits. America needs baseball and baseball needs America. It’s a great game that has survived scandals, strikes and Bud Selig. It ought to survive the pure boyish joy of one little T-ball team.

In the meantime, please take solace in the fact that we won’t be back in Aisle 3, Rows V and W, real soon. As we left, stadium security thanked us for our business, then begged us tearfully never to come back.

“Look, we made a cop cry!” Ian said excitedly.

Yes, we did, son. For that, we are sorry too.

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Erskine also writes “Man of the House” for Saturday’s Home section.

chris.erskine@latimes.com.