Maybe it started when he began seeing kids with their own $250 bats, some bringing a couple of them to games.

Maybe it started when catchers began bringing their own equipment, one kid arriving at games with what he calls a “suitcase on wheels.”

Or maybe it was when one of the mothers said about her son, who wasn’t very talented and didn’t get a lot of playing time, “Well, you’re the coach; your job is to make him a better baseball player.”

But somewhere along the way, this man — this coach — who has been involved off and on for over 30 years now, decided he’s had it with Little League baseball.

Had it with the attitudes.

Had it with the confrontations.

And, most of all?

Had it with the parents.

“It’s not the kids,” he says. “The kids are still great. It’s a great age. They haven’t been tainted yet. They listen, and want to get better. There’s hardly ever any problem between the kids. It’s the parents.

“When I first started, it was all about team. No more. Those days are long gone. Now it’s all about ‘my son.’ And because of that, the relationship between parent and coach has dramatically changed.”

The coach is no wide-eyed innocent in all this. He’s been around sports all his life, both as a player and a coach. He now coaches in a Rhode Island league that takes Little League seriously. In short, he knows the terrain.

He also knows that being a Little League coach, or a coach of any youth sport for that matter, is a labor of love. No pay. Games three nights a week, which take him out of the house for roughly three hours. Maybe another night of practice. All this for about three months, maybe more if All-Star games are included.

“Every coach in my league has had at least one confrontation with a parent this year,” he says.

It’s always the same old song, of course.

“Why doesn’t my kid play more?”

“Why do you always take my kid out of the game first?”

“How come Johnny pitches when my kid’s better?”

On and on it goes, the soundtrack to the season, the discontent that starts to poison everything, sapping the fun out of it.

“It’s more than the confrontations,” the coach says, “as unsettling as they are. It’s that you can sense the tension there. The coach has become the potential adversary, regardless of how much time you are spending. It’s like you’re the enemy. That you’re taking away something that their son is entitled to. That’s the underlying tension, and it’s always there.”

So how did it get this crazy?

Little League has long been a slice of Americana, of course, almost as timeless as a Norman Rockwell magazine cover. It’s all but a rite of passage, little kids on a little diamond, coming of age with a game whose roots run deep through this country’s history.

And if all sports now have their youth teams, and their youth leagues, Little League is institutionalized in ways the others aren’t, a summer ritual played out in every town in this country. The Little League World Series has become part of the country’s sports calendar, complete with national TV and media.

Maybe that’s the root of the problem, the sense that it’s all too much too soon, that it has morphed into something it was never intended to be, a childhood game that’s gotten too complicated.

And if we’ve all come to know that the idea of a bunch of kids going down to the playground and choosing up sides and figuring out things by themselves now seems as dated as record players and black-and-white TVs in the living room, there’s also little question that parents are more involved than ever before.

And why not?

Parents are more involved with everything these days, right?

“When I first started, in 1975, kids came down to the field by themselves, the mothers made meatball sandwiches,” the coach says. “It was simpler.”

He pauses a beat.

“When did it all change from ‘team’ to ‘me?’ ” he asks. “Because that’s what it’s become. There is no appreciation of team, no real caring how the team does, or what’s best for the team. It’s like the parents go to games with blinders on, and all they see is their son. We have parents who come to every practice. And you want to say to them — What are you doing?

“And, hey, it’s not every parent. That would be unfair. But it’s too many of them. And it’s taken the fun out of it. And it’s not just me who feels like this, believe me. Because your only reward is the relationship you have with the kids. That’s it. You’re not in it for the praise. You’re in it for the kids. To learn what it’s like to be on a team. To learn the game. To give all of them the best experience they can have. And too many parents get in the way of that, poison it.

He pauses another beat.

And when the coach, speaks again, you can hear the exasperation in his voice, the incredulity of it all.

“It’s Little League.”

breynold@projo.com