It’s been a spring to forget, if you ask me.

The Celtics got beat up and burned out.

Big Papi is making me long for Reggie Jefferson.

I asked Jon and Kate for marital advice.

I traded my Twitter stock for GM.

Most discouraging of all, though, is that I’ve seen a lot of bad high school baseball.

At least the weather has been pretty nice.

Really, I’m not here to complain. Getting paid to spend a pleasant spring late afternoon watching baseball beats working, and it sure beats watching Oprah.

I’ll never leave a baseball game muttering “I hate my job.” But on more than one occasion this season, I’ve found myself asking the same question Casey Stengel asked of his 1962 New York Mets – “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

The numbers only begin to tell the story. I saw 17 games during the regular season involving 20 different teams. In those 17 games, I scored 96 errors (and some people think I’m generous). That’s a little under six per game. Not counting intentional walks, 151 batters reached via base on balls, nearly nine per game. There were also 27 hit by pitch. I saw 28 1-2-3 innings.

Unfortunately, I have to keep my desk at the office somewhat organized, so I haven’t kept any score books or other records around to compare to previous seasons. Eventually, I’m going to to burn all evidence of this season, to protect the innocent, too. So all I can go by is memory, and by my recollection, it’s never been this bad.

There have been exceptions, of course. But the overall quality of play has been poor.

Anyone who has been watching high school baseball for more than a decade will tell you the quality of play has been declining for years. This year has seen more than the usual share of fundamental mistakes – infielders taking circular routes to ground balls, trying to glove them from the side rather than getting in front of the ball, or letting the ball play them, outfielders initially breaking in on balls instead of back, countless cutoff men missed, catchers not moving their feet behind the plate,

Fundamentals, or lack thereof, come down to coaching. But there hasn’t been much turnover in the local coaching ranks over the last couple of years, and they haven’t just stopped teaching them. I’ve had numerous coaches lament the amount of practice time they’ve spent working on fielding this season which has gone for naught.

This isn’t basketball, so we can’t blame AAU. Yes, there are more kids playing on travel teams than, say, 20 years ago. Playing in a cold climate, they need all the time on the field that they can get.

Speaking of the weather, that is sometimes too convenient an excuse. Winter lingers around these parts for so long that players don’t get on the field until Opening Day sometimes. No doubt, it’s tough to get ready to play defense taking ground balls off a gym floor. The cleanest game I saw this year, however, was also the first game I saw, for whatever that’s worth. Gray-New Gloucester and North Yarmouth Academy combined for one error on April 18, less than a week after both teams got on a field for the first time.

Everything kind of went down hill from there. Thankfully, the second season is about to begin, and that usually makes up for anything the regular season lacks, whether it’s good weather, good baseball or good drama. All four of the regions in our area – Eastern A, Western B, C and D – are pretty much up for grabs, in part because even the best teams have been so inconsistent this season.

Edward Little and Oxford Hills are two of eight teams with double-digit wins in the ‘A’ bracket. The field is so deep that some coaches believe that Brewer, the No. 6 seed and the defending regional champion, is still the best team. I say draw the winner out of a hat and you’d have just as much a chance of figuring it out.

Top-seeded Cape Elizabeth gets the nod for favorite in Western B, but mostly due to pedigree. While the Western Maine Conference usually dominates the bracket in numbers, the winner has been just as likely to come out of the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference this decade. That used to mean Oak Hill or Maranacook, but Lincoln Academy surpassed them this year. Mountain Valley comes out of the Mountain Valley Conference having lost one game, and while they play a predominantly Class C schedule, the Falcons’ offense is going to be tough to shut down.

St. Dom’s wants to reclaim its perch atop Western C, and the Saints dominated the WMC to make a strong case. Hall-Dale was the best Class C team in the MVC and has the one ace nobody wants to face in Ryan Leach. Dirigo has been playing its best baseball down the stretch, and Livermore Falls has offensive and pitching depth. Winthrop, meanwhile, has been flying under the radar all year and feels like it has a little unfinished business.

Class D is the easiest call since it comes down to the usual suspects, Richmond and Rangeley. The two teams split this season, and their fans should start making arrangements to meet at St. Joseph’s College in 10 days.

I’ll be there, too, for at least three regional finals. Hopefully, I won’t be muttering to myself about anything but the bugs.