Is it me or does anyone else think its insane that some of these youth baseball players are playing 70, 80, 90 games between April and October? That's like half an MLB season and for what is essentially an "individual sport" where team games/practices arent really required to improve. I mean any dad can go out there and throw harder to their kid in their backyard than some 9 or 10 year old kid can at some field an hour away. I wonder if Travel Golf is next?
OT: Youth Travel Baseball
- Thread starter Sean Miller Fan
- Start date
It's no different for travel lacrosse, softball or soccer.
Its a ton different than soccer. You cant play near the amount of soccer games due to the extreme amount of running. There is just about 0 physical activity in baseball so you could play it nonstop.
Also, lacrosse and soccer are team sports unlike baseball and golf. You need to be in a practice/game environment to improve your skills. In baseball, your dad can go hit you grounders and pitch to you when you are 10 and that is literally better than driving to a field an hour away and standing around for 3 hours while swinging the bat a few times.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
Mind if I print this and show it to the guy I work with? His kid plays a half-dozen soccer games or more every weekend and a few during the week and that goes on as long as the weather is nice.
no.
i'm smack dab in the middle of this. my son plays travel soccer at 10 years old. i live in the epicenter of the world in lacrosse - my town's school won both girls and boys state championships in lacrosse. we have friends who play travel baseball and lacrosse.
baseball (and softball) is WAY different. WAY. SMF is correct that the baseball players are playing constantly (it's not as much as he's saying, though). a boy on our soccer team dropped last year as he couldn't do baseball with anything else. to contrast, we have boys who on soccer who do both travel soccer and lacrosse - can't do that with baseball. thankfully, my son hates it (boring) and likes soccer and BB. with soccer, we have around 1 or 2 tournaments per season and usually one game per week.
take my little man to the cages and throw about 80% as hard as i can and he is barrelling the ball. we go to game that night and he strikes out twice from pitchers who are throwing it 1/2 the speed. i've noticed he is on plate and steps forward with lead foot when im on mound but in games, he is like 3' off plate and steps out on his swing. i ask him why and he says "dad, i know your pitches are strikes and wont hit me."
so there's only one thing left to do.. start beaning him more in the cages..
so there's only one thing left to do.. start beaning him more in the cages..
There is no way he is playing 6 soccer games a weekend. That isnt possible. Travel/club soccer is way different. And its not a sport where you can play THAT much due to the running as I said earlier.
In 1 random weekend? Sure. Not every weekend.
And there's virtually no soccer games between mid-June and late August.
Tell him to step in. He won't step in, but it will help him stop stepping out.
I learned this in girls softball. Once they start fastpitch it's a common problem until the fear is gone.
Having played in a variety of youth travel sports tournaments myself (baseball, lacrosse, etc.) it definitely wears on you. Travel lacrosse was always two games on Saturday and one Sunday morning BEFORE any sort of playoffs. If you went far enough, you could end up playing 3-4 games on Sunday. Baseball was a similar format, but required much less physical exertion, unless you were a pitcher, your arm had to be like Jello by the end of the weekend. Fortunately that was not me. Saturday after travel lacrosse in the summer was a very early night due to exhaustion, but the same couldn't be said for travel baseball
yeah lacrosse games are going to tire you out much more than baseball, obviously. with soccer, we have 2 games in a day, at most. which really isn't that bad.
but you know the real problem - 8:00am start time in a tournament an hour away. and you have to be at the field by 7:30. lots of fun dragging kids out of bed at 6:00am on a weekend!
It's "matches". Soccer matches. Not a game. Played on a pitch, by players wearing kits. Get with it.
stop it, dont be that guy. and god forbid if i see you reference a hockey jersey as a sweater, i'll puke.
no one believes you can throw a strike.
i like you and appreciate your other thougths but you need to hear some $hit, here, my friend.
you're bizarre, negativity towards soccer is really dumb. you've tried to make your dumb point over and over and over again. we all get it. maybe time to just move on with your life and let people who enjoy the sport to do just that - discuss and enjoy it w/out your lame need to negatively chime in on every GD post about it. you're literally being the definition of a negative, old reactionary yinzer. you're capable of doing better and that's my expectation of you moving forward. change isn't that hard, my friend.
When I was a kid (now granted this might be considered child abuse these days who knows) my dad put me up against a brick wall in the basement and threw tennis balls at me until I no longer flinched and just took it. Wasn’t cruel or unusual punishment or anything. Just a way to toughen me up a little bit and not be scared to get hit. Worked like a charm. Literally never moved from a baseball unless it was going to hit me in the head after that. Moral of the story - Questionable parenting tactic but outrageously effective.
Make cage batting practice a family event. Assuming the wifey would throw slower and less accurately than you, let her bean the little man with some pitches once in a while.
Plus, if the little guy thinks she threw at him on purpose, he might clean his room up in the future without being asked twice.
Everybody wins.
Between playing legion, VFW and other leagues when I was 13-14 I bet I was playing about 70 games a year most of which was local and the competition until regionals or even states was bad.
Once I got into HS, I bet that number jumped to 100 games when adding in travel ball and tournaments each weekend. I was up and down the East Coast playing in showcases on the weekend and still playing probably two other games a week locally.
The difference now though as a volunteer for a high school program everyone is traveling. Some of these kids that are involved in these showcases have zero shot of even ever sniffing the varsity field let a lone setting foot on a college field. So many travel ball organizations popping up and taking everyone and just printing money. Not a big deal whatever mom and dad throwing away money but here comes the biggest issue.
Because mommy and daddy are paying an insane amount of money to watch Sammy go 1-3 in a fourth tier tournament with zero college coaches everything their coach says is the gospel. When in reality their coaches are just some buddies of whoever runs the talented teams collecting a check. Then when you get them in the winter or even the fall for rec you have zero chance because they don’t wanna make adjustments because they paid good money for that long swing with holes everywhere and are told how great they are each and every weekend.
Now for the higher skilled players I’ve coached it’s the best way for them to develop and get better and encourage it if they have the means to get into an established program. There is no substitute for seeing 85+ in the box 12-16 ABS a weekend or a pitcher facing nine guys going D1 or D2 and putting their name out there.
Ummm.....if you look at my rankings of sports, honestly soccer (at least International wise) is high on my list. I loved USA/Mexico and have caught some of the Euro2020 matches. So no, it is not a hatred of soccer.
I just like poking fun of "soccer taking over the world" Americans like SMF who when he describes why he likes soccer I can't understand why he would not like hockey because the same close games, premium on goals and at a moments notice a play can happen out of nowhere...... So....no that wasn't a bust on soccer per se, just on SMF.
Honestly, don't dismiss baseball. Playing SS and especially Catcher would be just as hard as playing 6 soccer games a weekend and then let's not forget pitching, these kids are on pitch counts so you have to have enough pitchers on these travel teams.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
Pitcher and catcher, ok. But SS? That has the same physical exertion as golf.
You expend more energy walking 18 holes of golf than playing baseball.
If he is saying they play 6 games every single weekend, then he obviously is unless he's on 3-4 different teams like I said. There could be 2 weekends per season where they could play 4-5 games in a weekend for their club team and then maybe make it back in time for a Sunday night Travel game but that would be once or twice a season. You simply cannot play that much soccer. It is too physically demanding.
agree with SMF, baseball is long and drawn out but not exactly physically exerting. i like baseball alot but 98% of it is standing around. the most exertion is jogging to and from the dugout between innings and that's not an exaggeration.
Extremely hard and much skill is needed but endurance isnt one of them.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
Can you slow down? I decided to copy and paste these over to email. Appreciate you setting him straight. Just in case he comes back at me, do you have any contact information I could pass along? I really hate being in the middle of something where one side is a former Navy Seal.
i remember jesse orosco during a pre-season. the pitchers' coniditioning was to run around the field one time. jesse ran to first base and that was it. the reporter asked him why he didn't do the full condititiong. his response, "for what? i'm never running in a game."
dude loved being fat. what a legend.
and soccer is great for kids 6-10 years old until they get coordination and go play a real sport. it's why it's so popular for that age group and once the kids can walk and chew gum, they move on. perfect to just get your 6 year old out and run around for an hour knowing it wont eat up your whole day.. football, baseball are 2-3 hours long.
The wear amd tear on travel baseball is with catchers and pitchers. 2 in house games innthe week plus 4 or 5 tournament games on weekends then fall ball. Arm issues are the worry and many coaches and parents only concern is winning.
Not with a legit travel ball program. Catchers are catching game one and if they are good enough will DH in their second game. Pitchers are throwing a max of four innings.
you don't have to responsd to a dumb statement with something just as dumb.
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I've got no dog in this fight (though I tend to agree with SMF on this one) but what does him being a Navy Seal have to do with anything?
Soccer is a great activity for even fat kids to play and get in better shape. You basically have to run.......no real hand eye coordination needed, no skills, just run....it is like distance running in a contained field (aka "pitch"). Occasionally, a ball comes along and you kick it.
Not really. I mean, at the younger levels, sure, its often chaos. My daughter is at the 11U travel team level and plays defense. I'm amazed at the level of skill and coordination these players have with each other at that age.
in baseball, from little league pretty much thru high school, your best athlete is the SS. look at any baseball team at any level between tee ball and high school and you want to find the best athlete, he's playing SS.
for the record, i've never played SS. i like to say it's because im lefty but i still doubt i'd ever have been the SS.
I remember when I was young my community had probably an 8-team rec league. You had your entire season within the same rec league playing at the same location, just different fields. It was great and perfect as it went through maybe middle school age groups. You built up some pretty good rivalry games too. I don't even think this league exists anymore and how travel leagues take over as you get older.
Yes. I was a pretty good player actually. Came close to making the Pony League World Series.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
I mean, dude scares me but really nothing. He's also a ND fan. Just thought if he is calling someone he doesn't know a liar I'd throw it in.
Fat kids can't play soccer. Sure you can put them on the field but they really struggle because they cant run. Which is why if you are really fat and cannot play a real sport, baseball is great. It requires no running so you can just stand in the batters box and swing a bat a few times. Or stand by 1st base and move 10 feet to cover 1st when the ball is hit somewhere else. It is nice that fat kids have this option.
He is DEFINITELY lying about the every weekend thing.
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