He’s Taking It a Step at a Time : High schools: Irvine baseball Coach Bob Flint suffered a heart attack June 24. Now recovering, he says the experience has changed his perspective.

SEAL BEACH —  Bob Flint remembers the moment clearly. Even now, a month later, he cannot forget. The sun felt warm on his back, the grass soft beneath his baseball spikes, but the pain in his chest was growing worse by the second. Something was seriously wrong.

This can’t be happening, he thought at the time. Not now. Not to him. Not at 47. Not a month after coaching Irvine High School to its finest baseball season. Not without his family close by.

But sadly, painfully, it was happening. On the morning of June 24, Flint suffered a heart attack at his summer baseball camp at Irvine High.

“The experience was surrealistic, because I kept thinking ‘Not me, not me,’ ” said Flint, who is recovering at his home in Seal Beach. “Every once in a while, I’ll be walking around the house and I’ll say, ‘Hey, I had a heart attack.’ ”

The urge to fight through the discomfort never entered Flint’s mind, and that might have saved his life. Flint, who remained alert at all times, checked himself into a hospital where doctors diagnosed a heart attack and were able to treat him quickly.

Of the seven signs of heart disease, Flint, young, strong and fit, had only one: heredity. Two of his uncles died relatively young of heart attacks.

After undergoing a procedure to clear a blood clot in his heart, he spent four days on his back at Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, then was sent home. No driving for the first three weeks. No travel. And no coaching.

Following doctor’s orders, Flint has been doing little more than reading, resting and watching TV. He was cleared to watch Irvine’s summer league games, which ended this week, but could not do anything but watch.

He couldn’t wait to see his team again. Heck, he couldn’t wait to see a ball field again.

So, on the day he checked out of the hospital, he persuaded Jeanne, his wife of 22 years, to drive him to Rancho Santiago College, where Irvine was playing Mater Dei.

The sun never felt so warm, the air so cool, and the grass never looked so green. It felt good to be alive.

“(Mater Dei Coach Bob) Ickes saw me and said, ‘You’re nuts. Get outta here,’ ” Flint said, laughing.

By day’s end, Flint was exhausted. Since his heart attack, he’s found his energy levels aren’t what they used to be. Most days he tires by early afternoon, but it gives him a good excuse to conk out on the couch.

In a few weeks, he will undergo a stress test. And if all goes well, he will be cleared to teach his normal load of five periods of American history and resume coaching the baseball team, which has all but two starters back from the squad that lost to Covina South Hills in the Southern Section 4-A title game.

Business as usual? Hardly anything in Flint’s life is as it once was.

“Without being melodramatic, my perspective has changed--not that I didn’t have things in the right place to begin with,” Flint said.

At some point while sifting through the 93 get-well cards and letters he received, Flint began to take stock of what’s important in his life. He quickly put family and friends at the top of his list.

“He got a telegram from Bobby Hamelin (a former Irvine standout now a minor leaguer in the Kansas City Royals’ organization) that said, ‘If South Hills had known you’d take it so hard, they probably would have lost the championship game,’ ” Jeanne said.

When the Flints got home from the hospital, there were 35 messages on the answering machine. Even the Southern Section umpires’ organization called.

“They said, ‘You’re such a gentleman . . . we’re sincerely saddened,’ ” Jeanne said. “Can you imagine? Umpires calling a coach?”

And people Flint barely knew stopped by the hospital or called to see if there was anything they could do. Andy Lopez, coach of NCAA champion Pepperdine, called. Mike Gerakos, coach at UC Irvine until the school dropped its baseball program this year, sent Flint a UCI baseball cap.

“He said, ‘I’ve only got two left. One is going to you and the other is going to Cooperstown,’ ” Flint said.

Friends sent 17 books, the first of which Flint read during a sleepless night in the hospital. He finished around 4 a.m., then began to drift off to sleep. Before long, however, he was awakened by the frightening shaking of the largest earthquake to hit California in some 40 years.

Now, he can laugh about it, but that morning he thought Someone was trying to get a message across to him.

“I read an article about (former Philadelphia Eagle Coach) Dick Vermeil,” Flint said. “He was a mess. The (NFL players’) strike finally forced him out of the office. He went to the Poconos for the day and said, ‘Hey, there’s a whole world out here.’ ”

This is not to say that Flint could ever have been confused with a workaholic--quite the opposite, in fact--but it has given him time to think about what’s really important in his life.

“I was OK with myself,” he said. “I’ve had 47 1/2 years and it’s been nails. But I was more concerned about others. About Jeanne. About my daughter (Jodee, 20,) and my son (Jared, 13).

“About friends.”