Baseball and Skateboarding?

Many will say that there are dangers with skateboarding, and that is true. There is also dangers with bike riding and metal bats. My only issue with skateboarding is the company it keeps. Sorry if I sound stereotypical but facts a fact. Will they grow out of it, the answer is a definite .........maybe

My 15 yo still does both. Skating starts to pick up around now as baseball winds down a little. Still working on skills but no games right now. Yes, you can get hurt skating but you can slip and fall walking out your front door also. I guess what it all comes down to is, does he sit in front of a TV or computer for the next month and a half or stay active and outside? Most of the kids he skates with are pretty good kids.

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"If tag gets outlawed, only outlaws will play tag..."

Anonymous


cadDAD
Drink lots of water. At ease....

You have to have concrete to skate and since there isn’t much concrete in the rural xburb of Spring Creek, Tennessee, skateboarding is almost nonexistent unless you “go to town”. I will share what I have picked up on and take it for what it’s worth. I'm sure it's regional but there seems to be a stigma attached to skateboarders in this area. While skateboarding is quite an athletic achievement, “traditional” athletes tend to separate themselves from the serious “skaters”.
Fungo

MoDad
Perhaps your son doesn't play varsity baseball at a school with a good program or you pay money for a high profile summer team, and is not being recruited and has no interest in playing college baseball. Then why not let him skateboard? It is true there is a culture of drug use, music and partying that many but not all skateboarders subscribe to, but that does not make it inevitable he will engage in that process. I guess it depends on your parenting style.

We took it away (traded for a car). Our very athletic son could outdo any of his friends at skateboarding. But we could not stomach the idea of a broken wrist, twisted shoulder, or damaged arm that came from skateboarding. His friends that engaged in skateboarding were generally good kids, but not athletes who were trying to get a D1 scholarship. I think the same analysis can be used to exclude many other areas of life which threaten any of our kids. That made it simple.

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We took it away (traded for a car).

In WI we do things in a little more twisted angle. Years ago a friends son started the boarding "thing". His dad was concerned and bribed him into trading in the skateboard for a shiny new Remmington 308 semi-automatic rifle. You'd have to live in this part of the world to understand this no-brainer.

We told son if you want to skateboard.... we won't continue paying for tournament teams, trips, private instruction, etc...and have him get injured on a skateboard......he picked baseball......

......then he fell, his freshman year, getting out of his dorm bunkbed....and broke his wrist.....

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trading in the skateboard for a shiny new Remmington 308 semi-automatic rifle. You'd have to live in this part of the world to understand this no-brainer.

That works here in TN too!

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Do any of you have a son that has been or is interested in skateboarding, as well as baseball?

Ohhh do I!! My son went from 4th grade through 7th grade while we lived in Hawaii,..home of huge skateboarding, surfing, and year round baseball.

The Hickam Air Force base engineers ( being the studly guys they are ) took an old airplane hanger and actually hand built the most amazing skateboard park I have ever seen, out of wood. Because it was in an open ended hanger,..the kids were shaded from the sun and the open ends allowed for tropical breezes to sway in while the skateboarders " did their thing!".
Pretty amazing set up and was monitored by adults for safety. I gotta admit, even I kinda got a twinge and wanted to try " dropping in on the bowl " just to see what the rush was like!

One of the most cliche things people see in Waikiki ( 7 miles from our home at the time,..yes, it was pretty dang dreamy, I must admit! ) is kids skateboarding along the boardwalk with surfboards in tow. If you had an adventurist child, you couldnt really escape the draw to skateboarding on the island. There was no getting around it. My son usually skateboarded to baseball practice. It was just an island way of life.

We started with some basic ground rules: we made it MANDATORY for our son to wear his
" geeky,..very non-cool, life saving " helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, and wrist guards.

That was the deal & we bought the best money could buy. ( sorry Walmart )

If found without any of the formentioned or helmet was NOT properly secured with chinstrap in place, skateboard was instantly confiscated & added as a new addition to the momma's pretty kitchen refrigerator top display, permanantly.

If origional skateboard was confiscated, ( a custom board in Waikiki usually started at about $300 ) then son would have to earn the money to buy a new one to start the process over. Hmmm,....son quickly figured out it would take a minimum three months, at a hundred yards a weekend, to mow enough yards to replace customized cool skateboard. Thus,...under strict diress,..he wore the safety gear. It helped,..helped alot, and even saved him several times from potentially severe head & wrist injuries, IMO.

All neighbors were informed and instructed that if son was sighted in the neighborhood without any of the safety gear, they were to call me and rat-him-out! Its one of those great things called the mom-network and I gottta tell ya it worked wonders! Son never knew who might be watching him! ha!

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If so, how did it pan out?

Once away from the island,.... ( & stuck amongst cornfields in Kansas,...talk about culture shock!) son still skateboarded,..but his focus started to shift once he got a little older & made the highschool baseball team. He spent almost all " extra " time trying to keep up with the Varsity guys & working his hiney off. The Varsity guys didnt skateboard & our sons skateboarding thrill seeking days began to deminish. ( relief relief relief!! )

As Fungo stated:

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While skateboarding is quite an athletic achievement, “traditional” athletes tend to separate themselves from the serious “skaters”.

We too found this true in our situation. Son can still grind on the best stair handrail around, but he has also found that skateboarders use an entirely different set of muscles than the football players and baseball players. He is usually painfully sore after getting back on the ol' board and taking it out for a spin.

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Did the skateboard interest eventually wane as the child grew oldered?

After turning 16 and mowing lawns to pay for baseball camps and gas to put in his little red truck,..son really had no money left for the skateboard hobby.
There are sports and hobbies,..and skateboarding turned to a hobby in our household. Guess it was just a natural progression.

While our skateboarding and surfing days were fun,..as the momma,..I much prefer our baseball days. With baseball I get to sit under a nice umbrella and eat my peanuts in peace. With skateboarding, I would find myself trying to scream over some, insanely horrific, headbanger music, to a fellow mom who was wearing a goth-like, black, airbrushed, rock-n-roll band t-shirt ( why did they always have something to do with death and skulls????) who usually insisted on showing me her latest body piercings! HA!

Baseball parents are so much more refined, aren't we?? ( wink-wink ) Give us a matching team baseball hat and we are happy campers.
Just think of the money I have saved on needless tattoos!

Baseball: refinement,...peace,...peanuts, & the smell of fresh mowed grass...doesn't get much better than that!

Shortstopmom,
Your posts are so descriptive I could actually feel the ocean breeze and smell the suntan oil!!!! Good job!
Fungo

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fellow mom who was wearing a goth-like black airbrushed rock-n-roll band t-shirt and insisting on showing me her latest body piercings!

I'm closing my eyes and drifting into a state of peacefulness conjuring up the sight of the HSBBW gals hanging around the backstop, tattooed head to foot, wallets chained to their capris, looking like a colander with all the body piercings, mp3 players banging out Beatle tunes, scorebooks, radar guns, scouting reports in hand, and in unison telling the ump they'll be waiting for him in the parking lot after the game.

SNAP OUT OF IT RZ IT'S ONLY A BAD DREAM

FUNGO & RZ1,.....

bottom line is when you are younger you can do both, but to reach a high level you must dedicate yourself to one or the other. that is what happened to me and bmx, plus parents wouldnt pay my entry fees so i just rode trails and i didnt pan out, so now its baseball 24-7!

Thanks for sharing your experiences. It was good to hear that there are other baseball players that either have or do skateboard. My son is not yet 11 years old; but, I am concerned about the skateboard "culture" (plus some injuries). He is much more interested in baseball than skateboarding; however, I've noticed that he now chooses to skateboard instead of practice baseball (at least since his season ended). I'm hoping that the skateboarding interest will wane once his official team practices start back up.

I'm so conservative as to be to the right of Genghis Kahn, and always saw the two, baseball and skateboarding, as mutually exclusive, not for athletic reasons, but from my observation that the culture of skateboarding didn't mix well with the discipline needed to be successful in baseball. While some of my Little Leaguers that I coached did both, the ones that stayed with skating tended to drop out of most other sports eventually. Some of the boys remained as likeable as ever, but a few turned pretty strange in high school, which may've happened anyway with or without skateboarding.

I refused to buy skateboards for our sons, and their slight interest passed pretty quickly...