My son hung them up after a year. A year in which he played pretty well and after a summer in which he played really well and worked really hard to get better. These things happen.
He and I talked a lot about it over the Thanksgiving Holiday and I better understand his frame of mind.
He tells me it started after the first team meeting, coach basically said, you guys are here for two reasons -- to go to class and to play baseball. That just didn't feel right to him anymore. And given how competitive his program is, how hard players drive each other, how many new players were brought in, etc. etc. he asked himself two questions: Do I have the talent to compete. He said he is convinced that the answer is yes -- although he didn't kid himself that the competition would be easy or that he would dominate the competition. But he does believe that he was "in" the competition. But the second question is what got him. "Do I have the will and the desire to compete?" The answer to that one, he had to admit, was no. He simply could no longer muster the desire to do what he knew it would take. He's at peace. It happens.
Big difference between college and HS baseball, I think, is that a stellar HS school player, even if he goes through some hard times, is living at home, with an everyday support group, playing with guys he's probably been friends with and played travel ball with for a fair number of years. He knows his place, knows the younger kids coming up and how he stacks against them, knows where he stands with his coaches....
In college, you come in competing against a bunch of guys who you don't already know, who you may not even like, who basically want to relegate you to the bench, playing for a coach who may start out with certain expectations of you, but will drop you like a hot potato if you don't meet or exceed his expectations and maybe even if you do if somebody better comes along, since he is ALWAYS in the market for an upgrade. And you're dealing with all this ON YOUR OWN at the same time as you're dealing wit all the other stuff that you have to deal with in college -- which is mostly way more demanding than dealing with high school.
It takes a helluva a lot of focus, discipline, maturity and commitment to cope and thrive in that environment. Lack any of them, and, well....