You are right Hitting. The whole deal is light years beyond what I had growing up. The Ted Williams camp in Connecticut, advertised in the back of Boy's Life Magazine, was a pipe dream for me. Maybe kids in non lower middle-class blue collar towns had things a little different, but most of my coaches were a slight notch above Buttermaker.
I can remember having three coaches growing up who weren't total boobs. My son had one assistant coach and two coaches from other teams who were boobs. Big difference in our experiences. We both love baseball though.
My son also got to train at the Alabama Sports Medicine Institute, travel around and play ball all summer and fall between Soph. and Jr. years and play at Lakepoint as well as numerous colleges around the Southeastern Conference. Tell me as a 16 y/o that I would walk out and play on an SEC field, you would have had to hit me with smelling salts before the game. We just did not have those kinds of opportunities. Also, getting to play at the next level was harder then. There was no internet. No HSbaseballweb. I still don't know how good players got opportunities where I was from. Well...not many did.