But right before getting in bed Thursday night, I realized the weight of the moment that had passed: I probably just spent my last evening in the dugout.

I played seven years of organized ball as a child, including Little League, Babe Ruth ball, summer leagues, J.V., and ending with varsity. My career there ended with an infield single that forestalled our elimination by exactly one at-bat. I’m incurably sentimental, and extremely romantic about baseball. After the loss, and after everyone had gone home, I sat in centerfield for about 10 minutes to soak it in.

I was blessed with a second act in my 20s, playing in a men’s league for another seven years. As much as I remember the game — the outfield, the batters’ box, the basepaths — I reminisce too about the languid Sunday morning double-headers in the dugout with the guys. Being on the Murphy’s Green Sox was the best thing I did between college and marriage. The Sox dugout was the site for thrills, agony, and the best jokes (including the worst jokes) of my life. It was also the very best sitting around of my life.

I quit the Green Sox after our first child. The night we lost in the playoffs, and I knew I had played my final game, I cried myself to sleep. Katie reassured me I would be back in the dugout soon.

Sure enough, I started a coach-pitch team for our parish and got to coach my two older boys together for two years. One day that season I served up a perfect meatball to 8-year-old Charlie who whacked a double to left-center. Around that time I read that in our old age, we often look back at our late 30s as the golden years. I was 38 at the time. I joked with a friend that Charlie’s double was probably the peak of my life.

It wasn’t. Over the next decade, I got to coach all three boys (and one daughter) in baseball ranging from tee-ball to Babe Ruth — 8^th graders on the big field. After that first age-38 season, I learned the secret: The best job in the world is assistant coach.

The head coach deals with umpires, opposing coaches, league officials, and other parents. The assistant coach deals with two things: Boys and baseball. I spent countless Spring evenings over the past decade sitting in the dugout, or even better, standing in the first-base coaching box, which to me is one of the grandest places in the world.

Coaching the whole team is fun, especially when you get an athletic kid who’s never played and loves to learn the game.

Coaching your own son is extra-meaningful, and thus extra-fraught. One of my favorite memories came in the first inning of a Babe Ruth game.

The opposing pitcher had neither great control nor serious velocity. The bases were about to be loaded and Charlie was coming up. I called Charlie down to the coaching box and said “just swing for a single.”

“What? This guy is throwing meatballs, Dad. I can hit a nuke.”

“A single scores two, Charlie. If you overswing you might pop out. Don’t be rash, son.”

Charlie went up there and fouled off the first pitch with a massive cut — a home-run swing. I glared. The next pitch, Charlie crushed  deep into the gap for a stand-up double and a 3-0 lead. From second base he turned and smirked at me and gave an insolent head nod that said, “Yeah, Dad. Take that.”

Sons, since Adam in the Garden, have always rebelled against their fathers. Some discard their faith. Some do drugs. My son rebelled by hitting bombs. I worked up a glower and pretended to be angry.

In my decade in the dugout and the coaching box, I became a better coach, a better fan, and maybe a better dad. In my first two seasons of kid-pitch, I was shouting to each player throughout every at-bat where to throw with the ball and which case to cover. I would keep screaming instructions while the ball was in play. I soon earned the error of this way, and eventually started asking (once) the shortstop to call out the situation and the right throws.

I also quickly adopted the one-syllable rule: If the umpire blows a call, I cannot always resist vocalizing an objection; but I limit my objection to one syllable. (I violated this rule once in my later years, a couple of my co-coaches could tell you.)

Across the years, the team where I played the least role was the worst team to which I ever exposed my kids. It was the time we fell into the Travel Team Trap.

We placed Charlie on a select team that practiced three times a week and played three games a week. At the first winter workout (why do 11-year-olds have winter workouts?) the head coach told the kids “baseball isn’t fun. Winning baseball is fun.” The boys then lost six of their first seven games, and the head coach quit, declaring “I’m washing my hands of this mess.”

The assistant coaches who took over handed me a hat at the next game and asked if I could help by policing the dugout while they were in the coaching bozes. I was thrilled to be back in the dugout. I gushed, “I’ll coach a base, hit infield-outfield, warm up a pitcher, run drills at practice, whatever help you need.”

They ignored me, and it took me a while to understand why: These weren’t volunteer dad-coaches. The reason we paid about $900 for select ball was that this was a job for these coaches. Asking me to hit fungoes would have been like a barista asking a customer to make everyone lattes while paying for the privilege.

This is one of the great sins of our age: The professionalization of youth sports. Dads, including the ones who love baseball, are kicked out of the dugout and demoted from partners in this glorious game to mere payers.

The highly paid travel-tea coaches and the private hitting trainers are probably producing better baseball specimens than we dads can. But that was never the point.

The point was not making major leagues. The point was forming boys into men. It was teaching them to improve through effort, to play fair and play hard, to learn from failures, to celebrate others’ successes.

Maybe more importantly, the point was boys having fun with Dad.

In his last plate appearance, Sean walked. He didn’t score. The season ended. The head coach gave him the sportsmanship award.

We got a burger and a milkshake afterwards, a custom observed in most of the 20 or so seasons my boys played. On my phone, we watched a touching video our Little League made of all the “seniors,” like Sean, featuring baby pictures and full-grown 12-year-old action shots. The video ended with the line “I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them.”

MAKE THIS SUMMER OF FAMILY PRICING

I mentioned there’s an intermediate league he can play in next year. He said he’ll stick to just his school team next Spring — that’s enough baseball for him.

You might think 20 seasons in the dugout would be enough baseball for me. It’s not. I’ve been crying since it ended. But I thank God I had those years, which are more than I deserved.