Youth Baseball
The Little League World Series is on ESPN now, featuring teams from all over the world. Which means, everywhere in the world there is a Dad watching a kid bat thinking, "they cut my kid for that!"
We have spent the last ten years involved in some way in some sort of Youth sports. I have come to several conclusions.
1) Youth sports are not about the kids. It is about parents.
2) Every kid is a whiney cry baby. Except Yours. He is sensitive.
3) On the first day of practice, the head coach will mis-pronounce your name and your son's name. He will say we play baseball for fun. What he means: we play baseball to win and you should worship my child like he was the babe born in Bethlehem.
4) They (usually Dads) decide who is a good player and who is not when the player is four years old. They (the same Dads) usually have no professional baseball experience except watching a game on TV.
5) If you want your kid to possible have a career in baseball: adopt of child from the Dominican Republic.
6) If you cannot adopt a kid from the Dominican Republic, dedicate all of you waking hours, including the five minutes when you make love to your wife, thinking about how you can get your kid on a Travel Team. I'd begin researching right after conception.
7) My opinion of Travel teams: The concept itself is good. Kind of like "honors" or "advanced placement" classes in school. The execution of it stinks. It is way too political. It costs way too much to do and honestly, are there that many exceptional youth baseball players out there?
8) Fall ball is worthless unless it is introducing your kid to rec league baseball. Have them take football or soccer instead.
9) What we need to be teaching (good sportsmanship) is often ignored so we can hoist a $6.00 trophy in the air.
10) We want the kids to compete and to win. But, at the end of the day we need to realize that there are 200 million Chinese who don't care.
We have spent the last ten years involved in some way in some sort of Youth sports. I have come to several conclusions.
1) Youth sports are not about the kids. It is about parents.
2) Every kid is a whiney cry baby. Except Yours. He is sensitive.
3) On the first day of practice, the head coach will mis-pronounce your name and your son's name. He will say we play baseball for fun. What he means: we play baseball to win and you should worship my child like he was the babe born in Bethlehem.
4) They (usually Dads) decide who is a good player and who is not when the player is four years old. They (the same Dads) usually have no professional baseball experience except watching a game on TV.
5) If you want your kid to possible have a career in baseball: adopt of child from the Dominican Republic.
6) If you cannot adopt a kid from the Dominican Republic, dedicate all of you waking hours, including the five minutes when you make love to your wife, thinking about how you can get your kid on a Travel Team. I'd begin researching right after conception.
7) My opinion of Travel teams: The concept itself is good. Kind of like "honors" or "advanced placement" classes in school. The execution of it stinks. It is way too political. It costs way too much to do and honestly, are there that many exceptional youth baseball players out there?
8) Fall ball is worthless unless it is introducing your kid to rec league baseball. Have them take football or soccer instead.
9) What we need to be teaching (good sportsmanship) is often ignored so we can hoist a $6.00 trophy in the air.
10) We want the kids to compete and to win. But, at the end of the day we need to realize that there are 200 million Chinese who don't care.
posted by Alan Manis | 5:38 PM
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