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Reply to "Travel Ball - Good and Bad......."

The biggest problem(for lack of a better word) in rec ball isn't so much the types of coaches since you can have good rec coaches and lousy travel ones. The problem is the level of play drops off from the top player in the league who's likely an all-star and travel player while the worst player in the league has no clue of his surroundings and probably would rather be somewhere else than rotting in RF for an inning and an AB but is on the field because everybody has to play in rec ball. Which is fine. That's what rec ball is about.

With the travel leagues, at least from top to bottom in the talent pool, the kids can play and want to play. Just that alone makes it better for the ballplayer looking to improve in his game.

When my kid started playing travel at 13, the biggest benefit to him was the better pitching he faced game-in and game-out in travel. That, more than anything prepared him to handle hitting at the high school level and not just hitting the decent pitchers but top pitchers in the conference. As for his fielding, it was gonna be there no matter where he played with the only diffence being the travel league games were played at a faster pace than most typical rec games and got more action in the OF because the hitting was better.

As for playing travel under 13, he really didn't have to because the local league is huge and most of the local high school ballplayers came thru that league. Since it's a CR/BR league, it's CR/BR all-star tournament team were able to play in open travel tournaments as well as the WS tournament, so he had rec, all-stars and travel built into one league. Otherwise, at his skill level, he probably would've tried out for a travel team but it wasn't necessary.
Last edited by zombywoof
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