Growing up in California, April meant baseball, practices on balmy afternoons, the first full month of pro ball, an unmistakable mystique that, to this day, brings a light to my heart as bright and warm as a California sunset.

Sunday is opening day (Yankees at Red Sox) and it will feel like Spring is finally here. My soul will lift in a big way.

Over the years, baseball has taught me a lot — even the shameful records of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire showed me something about the darker side of our nature — but most of what I learned was gained on the small diamond of Little League.

I learned to play to the best of my ability. I learned that, although I might not like an ump’s call, at the end of the day, it was his call that mattered, not how I felt. I learned that my opponent was not my enemy but just another player on the field, doing his best. I learned that, after the game, no matter the outcome, shaking my opponent’s hand, looking him in the eye and saying, “Good game,” was the honorable thing to do, the right thing.

Just because we lost a game didn’t mean we would lose them all. And just because we won again didn’t give us license to act like jerks and rub it in the faces of the vanquished.

Having grown up with that sense of fair play, of good sportsmanship — the civilized aspects of sports — it astounds me how some people are behaving themselves in the lead-up to, and the immediate days following, the passage of healthcare reform.

While politics is not sports (the results matter, ultimately), there are some similarities as far as winners and losers. In 1994, the Democrats were big losers just as in 2008, the Republicans lost big.

That’s the nature of democracy and, just as a fan has no control over whether their team wins or loses on any given day, a single vote rarely determines the outcome of an election. All we can hope is that our team brought their game on election day and the outcome works the way we’d hoped.

However, what I’m seeing recently is thug behavior of the worst sort. Just today, governors from around the country received letters from fringe nuts calling themselves “the Guardians of the free Republics” stating that the governors have three days to resign from office or “will be removed from office,” letters that captured the attention of the FBI, at least.

The day before, Fox clown Sean Hannity called a group of supporters “Tim McVeigh wannabes” in an apparent joke that, I for one, fail to see as humor. Considering that McVeigh, antigovernment right-winger was responsible for the bloodiest act of domestic terrorism in the nation’s history, the comment seemed irresponsible at least and treasonous at worst.

And so many other acts of senseless stupidity and dangerous rhetoric — a right-wing blogger calling for people to throw rocks through the windows of Democratic offices, posting the home address and phone numbers of congress members, Sarah Palin advising to “lock and reload” while putting the image of a rifle scope’s crosshairs over the names of Congress members she doesn’t agree with — the list goes on.

Not just sore losers, but thugs. Instead of accepting a tough loss and changing the game plan, these kooks have resorted to vandalism and calls to violence. Which, the last time I checked, is not how our democracy works.

Intimidation through violence is not how our system works. It is counter to the principals on which our country was founded. It is antidemocratic in the worst aspects of the totalitarian impulse.

It’s time to get back on the Little League field and relearn the simple rules of being gracious in our losses and humble in victory. Only then, will our country regain the right to call itself “the greatest country in the world.”

Until then, we’re just a nation of sore losers and crybabies.