Normally I don’t like to espouse the stuff my son does in baseball but I have to share this one as I think there is a message here.
He got his first “collegiate” win yesterday in an unusual way. I received a call yesterday morning from a friend who is helping organize a summer collegiate team. The team was short on pitchers since some of the kids had not finished school yet, or had been able to travel to where the team was playing. He wanted to know if my son was interested in pitching in the afternoon for his team. I said “of course” before I really knew what I was getting him into…He was scheduled to pitch on Monday for his 16U team so I had to check with his coach and get his approval. He said OK as long as it is less than 40 pitches and two innings.
So we head over to the field in the afternoon and get there while the other team is taking BP with these giant hairy men on the field hitting balls all over the place. This is a brand new class A1 facility - really the best of the best, including a huge scoreboard with a radar gun reading imbedded in it. My son looks at this and says “Oh great everyone else is going to be throwing 90 and I am going to be posting a whopping 78 up there for everyone to see” as he stepped out of the car he said “ I feel like a little 8th grader”
To make a long story short he ended up pitching for one inning and as fate would have it he got credited for the win. He did well, struck out the first kid he faced, went 1, 2, 3 and had the experience of a lifetime. He was not throwing high 80’s as some of the kids but was working 83-84 and was looked like he belonged. (thank goodness for the change-up!) He went though all of their warm ups, BP, hung out in the dugout with some really great players, experienced college level coaching, and got a taste of the game at the next level. This all overshadowed the pitching, which was just icing on the cake.
I guess the moral of this is that no matter what level your son is playing at, try find a way to give them the experience of the game at the next level up so they can see how it is done. We did this when he was 12, in 8th grade going into HS, and now. In this process we have kept his focus on where he was playing but tried to find ways for him to experience how things were done the next rung up the ladder.
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