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Deciding on "Select" Baseball?
DECIDING ON “SELECT" BASEBALL
Ok, you are considering whether your young ballplayer should play for a “select” team. First ask yourself, WHY? Is it because you hear and fear that he will fall behind his peers who are playing “select/travel” ball? Not true. Not a good reason. Is it because your local youth league is weak and going more and more to egalitarian baseball? That will tend to drive away kids who want to play merit based baseball. Is your kid enjoying and having FUN playing where he is? That is what it is about. What’s the problem? League play is over and he would like to play some more baseball. That’s a good reason if he hasn’t played very many games. You think a trip to Cooperstown or some other tournament site would be cool and allow you to brag to your coworkers? A trip to Jamaica is cooler and will impress your peers more. Some hitting instructor says he can get your kid on his academy team and how great it would be for his future. He has identified a sucker and is trying to bilk you out of your money! I personally think “select/travel” is pointless before about age 11 but it is your call.
Ok, for whatever reasons, you have decided to check out “select” opportunities. What should you look for?
The Coach
Is he knowledgeable? Can he communicate his knowledge to kids? Is this a revenue source for him? Does he have a son on the team and what positions does he play? If it is the one your son normally plays, guess who will be switching positions.
The Schedule
How many games vs how many practices. You improve in practice not during games. There should be a couple of games played locally a week. If they play more than couple of weekend tournaments a month, they are playing too much. If they are traveling all over the country playing every weekend in tournaments, WHY? Do you think the competition is actually better 500 miles away from home? This is going to get expensive and remember all these tournaments are put on by companies whose goal is to maximize profits by sucking in delusional parents. Why do you think they schedule so many teams into a tournament that teams have to play 4 games in one day? That isn’t fun but at $500 per team fattens the coffers.
The Roster
If you are going to tournaments at which they will be playing 8 games, that’s 48 innings. They’re going to need a LOT of pitchers and remember they threw in a couple of games during the week. A lot of these teams only carry 10 or 11 players so that no one ever has to sit the bench much. If every player on the team is a pitcher that still means that there is 60+ innings to be covered per week. Dad, it ain’t the curveball that is blowing up arms. Carrying 13-14 players is a good idea. Playing 4 games in one day ain’t fun! 4 guys sitting on the bench can be a blast and quite frankly it is the bench hijinks that they will be talking about on the way home. It doesn’t bother kids to sit. It bothers parents who are bored because Jr. isn’t in the lineup!
The Parents
If the other parents are a bunch of self absorbed, delusional PITAs, it is going to be a miserable experience for you. Just plan on planting yourself in a lawn chair down the foul line and keeping to yourself.
The Cost
Some delusional parents justify spending obscene amounts on their kid’s baseball as the price they must pay to help their kid get a college baseball scholarship. I have some ENRON stock I would like to sell them! Even if you could buy your way to a college baseball scholarship, under the new NCAA rules each scholarship will be a 1/3. That means he will be lucky to get $25K over four years. Yet parents are spending more than that on their son’s baseball experience before they reach puberty!
I’m not against select/travel baseball. I brought select/travel baseball to TEXAS but look before you leap. Don’t just swallow the koolaid and follow the Jones. Any situation may or may not be right for your son, you and your family.
If your son didn’t even play for a baseball team for a season and just worked daily in a home training program, he would be a better baseball player than if he only played in games and didn’t practice.
NO SELECT BALL, NO HS BALL?
“ If a kid isn’t playing ‘select’ ‘travel” and just plays ‘rec’. ‘league’ ball when he is 8-12 years old he will never catch up and make the High School team.” As proof, then comes the statement, “every single player to make the High School team the last 3 years has played ‘travel’ ball since he was 8.”
First, this is totally incorrect statement. The part about all the players that made the High School team having played “travel” ball may be true but that only proves that the parents of every quality athlete that attended that High School drank the Koolaid and followed the masses in an attempt to ‘keep up with the Jones’.
What a ballplayer does prior to puberty is no indicator of his future potential as a ballplayer. Whether he plays 30 or 100 games a year has no bearing upon how much he knows about how to play the game. Hiring the priciest Private Instructor at age 10 will have no bearing upon how he performs at 14.
Baseball pre-puberty is about having fun, playing ball with your buddies, learning a love for the game, and lessons in life. Nothing a player does will give him a future in baseball. Nothing he does will doom him to not have a future in baseball. This youth baseball experience is a short and precious period that you as parents get to share. If the kid is an athlete, and plays ball for 6 or 8 years prior to High School, he knows how the game is played. If he wants to succeed as a ballplayer and make the HS team, in a couple of years of diligent work he can surpass the less athletic kids that played absurd amounts of games and studied at the hands of the ‘Masters”. There are valid reasons to play "travel" baseball but don't be sucked in that it is the only path to future glory.
The above was taken from…
Bruce Lambin, THE COACH
www.tipsfromthecoach.com
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