So being a newer poster with a younger player 14U. I read alot of the posts regarding college ball and the difficulties players face when they get there.
I would love to hear some success or highlights of your son's especially those still playing. How are HS and the college seasons going? The threads have not really been updated. Has something your player either past or present done something to make you proud that you can share? Anything to brag about?
Mine is not a big deal because he's an 8th grader but son's tryouts are going well. He's a hit a couple of really nice "dingers" and is feeling confident. One did a one hop right into the trees behind the field.
He's also is learning to communicate with the coach regarding his arm (he's in the middle of a throwing program right now) and how he is feeling which is a big step forward for a shy kid.
A fun read. I was just saying this morning that he might never have as much fun as his HS Senior season. State champs, Captain of the All state team, never left a game(rotated SS/3b/pitcher). And then recruited to Big Ten.
I try to refrain from bragging as adbono calls me out.
Sounds like such great memories. Must have been a wonderful time. Is he still in college and playing?
I loved the link you shared. What a great read. I miss those little league years. One of the best memories was son was waiting to play an all star game when he was 10. It was pouring rain but the game couldn't be rescheduled. Any other time we wouldn't have played. There were puddles all over the dirt field. My son in his brand new white pants decides to take a running dive into the biggest puddle joining his teammates and their opponents as they dance around and splash each other. I saw it happening and could have stopped it but I didn't have the heart to. They were just having too much fun.
A fun read. I was just saying this morning that he might never have as much fun as his HS Senior season. State champs, Captain of the All state team, never left a game(rotated SS/3b/pitcher). And then recruited to Big Ten.
I try to refrain from bragging as adbono calls me out.
Wow. Adbono calls me out?!? Wasn’t aware that I was living rent free in your head. 😂
I would love to hear some success or highlights of your son's especially those still playing. How are HS and the college seasons going? The threads have not really been updated. Has something your player either past or present done something to make you proud that you can share? Anything to brag about?
You want happy? This is my happy place in time. For me as a parent, this is what it is all about.
Another person (former player) going out of their way to write a historical perspective article about witnessing a no-hitter and meeting my son afterward. It will be the 11 year anniversary tomorrow....April 1, 2012. I remember every pitch like it was yesterday, and my feet still have not thawed out.
BTW....there are a lot of incredible posts about successes and failures in HSBBWeb across high school, college and professional baseball. You don't have to look far for either. Yes, at its core baseball is mostly a failure sport but that is just the game itself. There are so many positives off the field. You have to look at those successes too.
"An official scorecard would mark that play as an infield single with two errors on the opposing team. But I can tell you, in that moment as I watched my son being lifted into the air by his teammates, it was as much of a home run as any Babe Ruth hit in his life. It was pure. It was perfect."
Someone started cutting onions in my office while I was reading that. Would give anything to be able to go back to my kid's 9u rec Bad News Bears team that made it to the championship game. By far the most fun / memorable season I have ever been a part of.
I don't know if you can link to this tiktok video my son just created. Makes me cry. I'm a writer and I'm working on a column about his 20 years in baseball. So many good memories.
I was talking with my son on the phone a couple of days ago. He mentioned a St Jude’s ad he saw the previous evening with a bunch of smiling kids. It was a donation ad.
My son commented he had a unique power when he played college ball. If he walked into the kid’s section of the local hospital with his game Jersey on and gave out baseballs the kids lit up. He said it was as cool as anything he did on the field.
I was talking with my son on the phone a couple of days ago. He mentioned a St Jude’s ad he saw the previous evening with a bunch of smiling kids. It was a donation ad.
My son commented he had a unique power when he played college ball. If he walked into the kid’s section of the local hospital with his game Jersey on and gave out baseballs the kids lit up. He said it was as cool as anything he did on the field.
This warms my heart. My oldest son has a medical condition and had multiple surgeries throughout childhood. When he was about 9, a professional football player came to visit the hospital. My husband went that time, and as soon as the player left visiting my son, they called me and couldn't stop talking about the visit. My son is now 23 years old and the photo of him with that player sits on his desk.
I don't know if you can link to this tiktok video my son just created. Makes me cry. I'm a writer and I'm working on a column about his 20 years in baseball. So many good memories.
Love this. I think as moms we sometimes get to see more of the vulnerable side of our boys. We can see how hard they work but also recognize when they doubt themselves. Chokes me up to watch it congratulations to your son. Wish him the very best!
Congratulations to your son!! That's amazing and you should very proud. That video is really telling. There are alot of young boys that put their heart and soul into the game. Whether their goal is the mlb, college, varsity or even starting on their middle school team. They just keep coming back for more and work day after day to be the best they can be.
A poster on another page gave some great advice when my son was just starting out he said don't critique your sons performance in the car after the game. Say I love watching you play instead and get him food.
I have followed this advice and have realized that there is absolutely no reason to review anything that he needed to work on because he was already much tougher on himself than I would ever be on him. My role is more to build him up and support him.
My daughter danced. I called my son's uniforms costumes (still do) just because it SOOO annoyed him!!
I have 1 baseball player and 1 very artistic kid that was in show choir. I could not stop calling the show choir costumes uniforms. It was such a habit😂
My column on my family's 20 year journey into baseball. Decided to save you all the trouble of linking to my web site and just put it here with some of the photos. Enjoy.
When someone told me that the Little League season is beginning, it hit me — our baseball journey started 20 years ago.
Duncan was three and truthfully I thought it was a little ridiculous. Three-year-old baseball — really???
But we signed up after I told longtime coach John Sirianni about the note from the preschool announcing the pee-wee league, inviting him to share the joke.
Instead, John asked if Duncan liked baseball. Well, I admitted, he sometimes slept with a baseball.
“Then let him play,” Sirianni advised. So we did.
The league was supposed to teach the kids the basics of the game, but Duncan’s team mostly seemed to master building sand castles on the pitcher’s mound. His coaches spent almost as much time tying shoes as they did teaching baseball.
After that first season we got Duncan a Fisher Price pitching machine. He walloped the first ball into the side of the garage and almost into the head of the neighbor who, against our warnings, stood there, cheerfully saying it would be crazy if Duncan got a bat on the ball, let alone hit it at him.
He ducked and lived to tell about it.
By middle school, Duncan had a one-sentence plan for his future — I want to play professional baseball.
Mark and I hurried to temper expectations. Baseball is really hard, what will you do if that doesn’t work out, we warned. You need to have a backup plan.
“You know, when you say I need a backup plan, it makes me feel like you don’t have confidence in me,” Duncan answered.
His dream immediately became our dream and our conversations shifted to — what will you do after baseball, whenever that comes?
Duncan while playing for the Lightning, his youth travel team.
Over the next few years, there were fabulous moments, when he made the All-Star team and they went to State, when his travel team, the Lightning, collected medals and trophies after tournament victories. There were sad moments when we found Duncan crying behind the field after a rough game and days we rode home in a silent car after a season ending loss.
Before long, the parents of his teammates became our best friends. We encountered weird umpires, drunk parents, and praise from officials and opponents that our kids played the game “the right way.”
Occasionally Duncan dabbled in football, basketball, soccer and ran some cross country, but baseball seemed to start earlier and earlier and the season lasted later and later.
He quit football after an injury that sent him to the hospital in an ambulance, taped to the backboard. He ran cross country for two years — he wasn’t good but he developed thighs like tree trunks, a great tool on the mound.
Duncan walking off the mound after pitching for the Indianola Indians in high school.
He played basketball until his junior year in high school, but finally quit after we asked his friend Brady why he wasn’t better at the sport. “I don’t know,” Brady exclaimed. “I’ve never seen a kid work so hard and be so bad.”
And with that it was all baseball.
After his sophomore year, we took him to his first D1 baseball camp and John Sirianni’s son, Mike, a coach at the school, told him for the first time he could play at the division 1 level in college. We walked into a nearby McDonald’s with our heads spinning.
“I thought I could do it,” Duncan told us, “but that’s the first time someone else said they thought I could do it.”
Our vacations became trips to tournaments, college visits and games. We met coaches who said Duncan was the player they wanted, but never called again. One coach irritated us by telling players that the athletes should stand here, pitchers over there, but then redeemed himself by offering Duncan his first college scholarship.
We visited colleges in Illinois, South Carolina, South Dakota and Colorado. He played tournaments in Illinois, Nebraska, Florida and Indiana, for coaches he loved and coaches we can’t remember. After all of it, he ended up down the road at Iowa.
On his first road trip as a Hawkeye, Duncan called. Iowa fans had stopped him and some teammates in the airport, asking for their autographs. “I haven’t even played a game yet,” Duncan said.
Duncan Davitt pumps his fist after getting out of an inning against the Northwestern Wildcats at Duane Banks Field in 2021. BRIAN RAY / hawkeyesports.com
We spent the next four years huddled around the radio or bad streaming services to catch away games or shivering on the bleachers in Iowa City during so-called “spring games.” We saw Duncan get his first collegiate win as a freshman against Oklahoma State and become the Sunday starter just as COVID took hold his sophomore year. We wore masks in the bleachers at Waterloo as he pitched with the Waterloo Bucks that summer, then watched him battle to get on the field at Iowa as competition revved up for starting positions.
Through all of it, Duncan knew he was chasing an unlikely dream. The NCAA says that about 2 percent of high school players get to play Division 1 baseball. Only about 600 high school and college players get drafted into the pros every year.
But Duncan knew it was possible. Major Leaguer Casey Blake, his brothers Pete and Ben and dad Joe all had been drafted, all were proof the dream could come true. And all of them told Duncan the same thing — dreams come true only when you work hard to make them come true.
So he worked. He left the table during Christmas dinner to throw because that’s when someone could catch for him. He and Brady built a weight rack in our garage during COVID so they could keep lifting. Family events were scheduled around practices, games and work outs.
The Tampa Bay Rays held its minor league spring training in Orlando at the ESPN World of Sports after their regular facilities were damaged by Hurricane Ian.
And last July, we gathered in Duncan’s living room with friends to watch stupid human tricks on television while nervously glancing at our phones as the MLB draft rolled by. Finally, in the 18th round, he was picked by the Tampa Bay Rays. And the real work began.
He spent the fall with the Rays in the Florida complex league — travel ball for recently drafted players. He worked on his own in Iowa City in the off-season, preparing for spring training. In February, he went back to Florida to try to earn his way to the next level.
Thursday that next level arrived.
He started the season with the Charleston River Dogs, the low A affiliate of the Rays. There is still High A, then double A and triple A between Duncan and Tropicana field, home of the major league team. It’s a long road with no guarantees. Except for more work.
There was so much we didn’t know when we signed Duncan up for Little League 20 years ago. We had no idea how much laundry would be involved, the dream that it would fuel, and how much work that dream would require.
We had no clue that we were signing up to change our lives.
But now, 20 years into our baseball journey, we know that opening day — at every level of the game — is more than the beginning of a season. It’s a day for all of us, parents and players alike, to dream.
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congratulations to your son. Wish him the very best!
