A bunch of parents wasting a lot of $$$ forcing their kids to live someone else's dream because they can't be honest about how much talent their kid has.

Like everything else, it depends on a lot of factors.

About like most things, I am sure it was a good and beneficial thing when it first started, but has since become a huge self feeding racket. Investing all that that is typically invested into kids who haven't hit puberty yet is absurd. Having a professional hitting instructor to groove in their swing at that age is a bit useless when their arms and legs are each gonna double in size in short order.

Its your money and time, and I don't really care how you spend either. I think it is crazy to invest that much of each into one activity for a kid that age. I sincerely hope my son doesn't want to go that route. Not sure what I will do if he wants to, has some talent and is genuinely having fun.

Kinda blows my mind how competitive baseball is out here.

My biggest issue with select baseball at a young age is the sacrifice kids make at the expense of other sports.

IMO kids should be playing multiple sports at a young age. Not baseball year round.

10 is too young. Your kid isn't falling behind, seriously.

Mas89 said:

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Marauder Blue 6 said:

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A bunch of parents wasting a lot of $$$ forcing their kids to live someone else's dream because they can't be honest about how much talent their kid has.

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Almost all kids who go to the next level in baseball today- high school, college, pros are playing select ball at an early age in a good program. Obviously only a few continue to advance to the higher levels but the chance and experience is once in a lifetime. Those who don't like it can always go play another sport or hobby. But they had the chance- they won't forget.

A handful of the current A&M baseball team players will be drafted this summer into the pros. One will probably be in the top 10 picks overall. He played select ball and developed into a great pitcher. You should ask Mr. Lacy if he wasted his money on select baseball.

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For every Lacy, there are thousands who don't make it and probably aren't even Varsity starters in HS. Major league baseball survived for decades without the Select and travel baseball system. It's not imperative for every kid to travel or go to whatever "World Series" is in vogue. Follow the money. The biggest beneficiaries of the Select and travel teams are the coaches, tournament organizers, league organizers, etc. who've convinced parents that it's necessary for Junior to play with them and that he really does have a chance for a scholarship. I've seen parents who've paid thousands for their kids to participate over several years and their son will probably get a D3 partial scholly in the very best case. I also know a tournament organizer who pockets almost a decent year's salary by hosting a few weekend tournaments over the summer. It's all a racket that does nothing more than steal childhoods from kids and overly ambitious parents with more dollars than sense.

Mas89 said:

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Marauder Blue 6 said:

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A bunch of parents wasting a lot of $$$ forcing their kids to live someone else's dream because they can't be honest about how much talent their kid has.

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Almost all kids who go to the next level in baseball today- high school, college, pros are playing select ball at an early age in a good program. Obviously only a few continue to advance to the higher levels but the chance and experience is once in a lifetime. Those who don't like it can always go play another sport or hobby. But they had the chance- they won't forget.

A handful of the current A&M baseball team players will be drafted this summer into the pros. One will probably be in the top 10 picks overall. He played select ball and developed into a great pitcher. You should ask Mr. Lacy if he wasted his money on select baseball.

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If you're justification for putting little Breighlynn in year-round select baseball is to help him make the pros, then... well.... perhaps you should take a step back and gain some perspective.

I guess I could see a kid playing a year-round sport because the kid loves it and can't get enough of it.

Not because their dad has "crunched the numbers" and figured the kid's chance of making the major leagues goes from 0.001% -> 0.004%.

Ducks4brkfast said:

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Kinda blows my mind how competitive baseball is out here.

My biggest issue with select baseball at a young age is the sacrifice kids make at the expense of other sports.

IMO kids should be playing multiple sports at a young age. Not baseball year round.

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My 9-year old plays select and started doing so in the spring of 2019. There's a lot of good & bad but you can manage a lot of that. One of the big problems I see in all youth sports is that there's no middle ground anymore between the super competitive travel/select programs and the rec leagues where everybody gets a trophy just for showing up- YMMV but IMHO by the time kids are about 8 years old or so they need to understand that just showing up isn't good enough in life, everything is a competition.

Most, if not all of the kids my boy plays with plays multiple sports. My son decided he didn't want to play soccer anymore this past fall but he does flag football, basketball, and summer track in addition to baseball. He's also into robotics and we spend a lot of time hunting & fishing.

I was opposed to him playing select at this age but after some fairly poor experiences with league ball and seeing the skill level of kids his age who played select and seeing the skill level of a lot of HS kids who all grew up playing select we made the move. The poor experiences were simply being stuck on a team with no coach for 3 seasons in a row so I coached and despite playing college football my baseball acumen is lacking (I googled youth baseball drills and tried to use those myself). And we'd be lucky to get 5 kids to show up to practice, lots of no call/no show BS.

I had parents come up to me and ask, "why isn't Timmy hitting the ball?" And my response was, "well, Timmy needs to come to practice and listen to what we're trying to coach him to do and I can only do so much in an hour or two per week and if you want him to hit you need to help him at home too."

My kid is by no means a stud. But what he is is a really big kid who can run. He's 5'0" 115 and not fat at all. He's not quick yet but once he gets out of low gear he can run, quickness will come with puberty and more muscle development. Right now he's sort of like a St. Bernard puppy who is all legs & paws and trips over his own feet. But he's big and strong and he can hit and he can throw hard but he got a little gun shy because he was throwing with a kid once who couldn't catch and the kid caught it with his face and got a broken nose. That shook my kid up for a while and he tried to throw a lot slower which caused poor accuracy and bad habits. Then one Saturday in the fall of '18 he asked me to call his buddy's dad so we could go to the ballpark and practice. There was an 8U tournament going on at the time and I was absolutely astounded at the skill level of the kids. There were no kids picking flowers or spacing out in the outfield but they were playing ball. He and his buddy who is a really good little athlete (he's one of those kids who's just really coordinated and fluid no matter what sport- my son and his buddy have played soccer & basketball and now baseball together since they were 5) both said they wanted to play with kids like they saw in the tournament.

So we tried out for this past spring and it was up & down. It was coach pitch but he hit well and improved a lot overall. The coaching and reps from coaches who know a helluva lot more than I do helped as did the fact that he learned he could throw it as hard as he wanted and the kids he was throwing to would catch it.

There were ups & downs and the team he was on in the spring was probably .500 but the kids had a lot of fun and improved and made friends. I don't feel that we spent an excessive amount of money either but again, YMMV.

He did play fall ball this past fall because moving up to 9U they go from coach-pitch to kid-pitch and that's a big transition. Kids can now get lead-offs, run on a dropped 3rd strike, pick off moves, etc. The team's improvement from spring to fall was substantial- they went from being about a .500 team to about .700. It definitely got hectic managing flag football, baseball, and soccer for our 5-year old. But it was fun and we still spent a lot of time on the water and in the duck marsh too.

I come from an athletic family (my brother was an Academic All American LB at Sam and our sister lettered 4 years as a swimmer at UH, and my wife could have played volleyball at Angelo State but chose A&M) and I try to take the same approach with my older boy (the younger one isn't old enough to understand yet) that my folks did with me and my siblings:
1) school comes first no matter what
2) have fun
3) be an example of good sportsmanship
4) if you're going to play anything you have to give it your best- basically, you will never get jumped on for going all out, if you're lazy or not paying attention then it's an issue
5) you can never quit on your team- if you don't like a sport or aren't having fun, that's fine you don't have to play anymore once the season is over but you absolutely cannot quit mid-season.

So far my boy loves it- he calls me at work most days wanting to know when I'll be home so we can go hit or play catch. Other days he calls and says he wants to play basketball or toss the football around and that's fun for us too. He got a bow for Christmas so he's learning that and a buddy gave me his starter bow so I'm learning that too. We do some kind of fishing pretty much every week, weather permitting, and he's learning to fly cast while my younger son can handle his Zebco 33 all on his own (mostly).

Like anything else you can get way too into it but it's your job as a parent to keep things in perspective. I want my boys to be gentlemen, be well rounded, understand competition, and have a drive to excel in whatever they do. We also want them to be healthy, active, and spend time with their friends doing stuff kids are supposed to do.

No BS, those old videos with Fred McGriff shilling for them were the first thing I thought of.

I might have even gone out and found a pair of those old Bike brand coaching shorts that have a 6" waistband and a 4" inseam. There may have been striped knee socks too.

Tom Emanski videos with outfielders throwing balls into trash cans FTMFW

my son is now in college. We did the balance of local little league and select teams. The local little league made him feel like a star as he was one of the better players throughout. He made terrific friends that he's still close with and it's been a few years since they last played. He played little league until he was too old to continue. We were careful with the select teams so that we stayed only in Houston (home for us) on weekend tournaments. Select ball would be during the off-season from little league. Only had low stress coaches in select ball; I avoided opportunities to go with the more hard core route. He was plenty good enough in select ball, but rarely the best player on the team. They won a couple tournaments but lost plenty of games as well. No thoughts of ever getting scholarships or anything crazy like that. That combination of little league & carefully-chosen select fostered a real love of the game, lessons learned from sports that translate to real life, ongoing friendships, and many proud moments as his dad.