Like most successful, young pitchers, my son could throw strikes consistently at a young age. One day when he was about 9 years old, a good friend who had been a college All-American and a Seattle Mariner, pulled me aside and said, "Here's the issue you're going to face as his father: There are going to be coaches who are going to want to over-use his arm. Therefore, your ongoing challenge is going to be that of finding coaches who won't be inclined to do that; but, who will do a good job of developing him as a player."
Needless to say, I never forgot that, and I tried to do a good job over his formative years of associating him with coaches who would live up to that advice.
One day when he was about 14 or 15, I was thanking my lucky stars that I'd heard and heeded my friend's advice. That day, he was pitching for his travel team in a game for which some championship was in line. At the end of about 5 or 6 innings in a hotly-contested game, his coach found me on the sideline and said, "I know that your son doesn't want to come out of this game, but I'm going to sit him. He's reached the target pitch count that we set for starting pitchers. This game may seem important to him right now, but he's going to have much more important ones in front of him if we help get him there."
The coach ended up being right on both counts.