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Reply to "Is travel baseball as we "used" to know it dead in Maryland?"

Good thread and good posts here. Some observations.

The market for personal instruction has been greatly enhanced by the very nature of the showcase and wide-area travel teams. Classic +/-. Given a good instructor, the one-on-one instruction certainly produces a mechanically sound player. However, without the daily grind of games and practices, getting the on-field reps and feel is being lost, as well as just learning the nuances of the game and learning how to overcome failure and how to win.

There are some quality organizations around that build very good travel teams from the younger ages and develop mostly players from their area. Once these teams hit the teen age groups, it is pretty hard to hold a team together at a high level for several reasons. Seems that more players are attending the private high schools. Most of the better teams have 2 or 3 kids that attend a private school. Once a player enters a private school, the coach can have control of that player's baseball activity, including summer and fall, for the next 4 years. This tends to start the falling off/falling apart process. Then, often times the better players that are left look for what they percieve to be a better team because they feel the team is not as good anymore.

Metro, Montgomery, and other strong leagues have become watered down (because of tournament and showcase teams)at the high school age groups, so players seek out better competition (on tournament and showcase teams). It has become a vicious cycle.

Too many parents think their player is a D1 prospect so they got to get out there, get to as many showcases as possible, got to get seen. Yet they end up on a minor showcase teams spending a fortune being seen by people that they have no chance of playing for. Don't get me wrong, their is something to be said for the showcases for sure, particularly the fall. But objectively determining a player's talent level, and then finding the right fit on a team that will get you seen by the right people for that talent level is the key.

For better or worse, the tournament and showcase teams fill the void, or the supposed void, for a lot of people.
Last edited by getagoodpitchtohit
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