I don't know what it's like in your area, but here in Ontario we have about half of the public and catholic highschools with baseball teams now...a few years ago there wasn't a high school league at all. Eahc town/city in the area had a baseball league. The way the league worked was this: everyone who signs up gets to play on a team of some sort...the lowest level of competition was called 'House League'. The age levels of competition in the high school age area are 13-15 year olds as of about June 1st or MAy 1st or so.....and 16-18 year olds. Starting at about ages 11 or 12, each city/town or "centre" had a 'Select Team' or an "All-Star team", meaning that you tryout for their team and the coaches select the best 12 or so players in a certain age group to be the cities best players and represent the city. And they would play in the 'Select/All-Star League', as they were the best talented players in the area. To play ball in a town costed some money, but not much. But if your kid played on the Select Team, you had to pay a bit more because of traveling and tournament expenses.
However at the same time in the high school age area, separate leagues are holding tryouts for 'Elite' teams. These 'Elite' teams attract players from as far as 2 hour driving distances away, and they play their games in the spring, at the same times that high school teams play, so that their season doesn't interfere with the local city league summer season. These elite teams boast the best coaches, and aim to select the players wioth the most potential, and as aresult they travel far and abroad to play tournaments and weekend doubleheaders against these other "Elite League teams". Here in Ontario Canada..to register to simply play ball at the lowest level of competition in the high school age area costs about 70 canadian bucks. If you play for the Select team it costs you an additional 50 or so dollars. AND if you had played for the cheaper elite team that I played for you'd be paying about 400 canadian smackaroos for the Spring Elite Team season, and another 200 Canadian Calamooz for the Elite Fall season. So if your kid can play elite ball, than he can obviously play for your local citi'es Select team. So that would cos about 70, plus 50 for Select, plus 400 for elite spring, and 200 for elite fall. So that would total 720 dollars just to play your favourite sport for a year.
Now if you had played elite ball around here for a so called 'bigger' elite franchise, you'd be paying about 2,000 Canadian bills for the spring and about 900 to a thousand Benjamins for the fall season. So that would be about 4,000 dollars canadian to play baseball for a year at the highest level of competition...(see what that is in American dollars, I;m sure that is still blody expensive).
Now doesn't that seem rediculous to you?
Think a bout it, only the rich parents get to help out their kids these days in their professional baseball dreams because they have really good jobs, so that they can send their kids to expesnive teams who play in these big-name tournaments in front of scouts. Does that seam more than a little but unfair?
When i was playing for the 'cheaper' Elite team in my area, i played for the 18u wodd bat team for only a spring and fall season. And we had this one kid at 3B who was only 15 years old-meaning he shoult have been playing for the 16U team, but he was so good, that he started every game except maybe two or three. And when he played he was our third hitter in the lineup. So we had a 15 year old playiong for an elite 18u wooden bat team and hitting third in the lineup amongst the big strong 18 year olds, he had a helluvan arm for a 15 year old and some helluva power for some at that age, and quite the size too. Sounds primising doesn't he?
Well he never played elite or even Select ball after that, cause he couldn't afford it.
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