Props to Blue-Grey!

Lot of good people in baseball... Thanks for the feedback and best of luck to your son!
Fungo

JT - My son and I actually met Gus Bell a year or two ago when my son tried out and was invited to a Blue-Grey. This man was very impressive - informative and offered assistance to all kids there. Gave out his number and encouraged kids to call at any time with questions regarding recruiting, etc. Classy guy!

My son tried out and was selected for their Team Miami(runner-up)Battle of the States and Team Florida a couple of years ago. Their Florida organization is well run. They are very knowledgable about the college recruiting process. They will provide alot of valuable info. However, their tournaments at least a couple of years ago had some problems. Of all the colleges that they claimed would be there only about 10% showed up. They had too many local kids on each team being coached by local coaches so the kids that weren't known to the coach didn't get alot of playing time in games. I don't know if they corrected these problems. I spoke to their Florida guy about it. My son didn't really enjoy it and even though he was selected for Team Florida, he chose not to participate. Some of his friends on Team Miami were also selected for Team Florida, they went and enjoyed the experience,
In my son's case, in all fairness I believe this was an isolated experience because the coach we were supposed to get for our tournament was someone we knew of( my son had never played for him but he had run the tryouts in our area). However, the day before the tournament he had a death in his family and he was replaced by a coach from the west coast of Florida. We had 4 or 5 kids from the west coast who he knew and they got most of the playing time. Remember, those are teams where you are paying for your son to not only participate but to get exposure to the college scouts. They are not paying for your son, you are and so is everybody else. The coaches who coach at the tournaments will never have an opportunity to evaluate your son. They are given a list before game time and told to play everyone. After a couple of games they have a better idea of who can do what. Our tournament coach did not give equal playing time to everyone. Had this been a traveling allstar team then there would be no complaints. Everybody would have had a chance to show what they could do and the best players were selected to start and play. Blue-Grey however is not that type of program. It is presented as an equal opportunity program to expose kids to the college scouts.

I have nothing but good to say about Gus Bell, he is in the business to make a living but he seems to really care about the kids too.

He is very accessable and will help in any way he can.

My '05 attended the B/G at William & Mary in '03 and Wake Forest in '04, both were very well run showcases with lots of scouts on hand.

Just remember, Gus has no control over the weather, you just have to pray when it comes to this.

They will work their butt off if it rains to ensure the kids get as many innings as possible.

CV

We should find out by Tues whether any of the 4 locals from our area made one of the teams. Here's to hoping we get a call.
JT

Hi, im 17 years old and i got mail a week ago that i was elected to play in Blue/Grey Game representing team NJ. Now i was really excited at first but then, i sort of got upset when my parents told me I can't go because they can't afford the hotel and plane ride to get down there. Am i really missing out on such a great thing or am i better off just not going? Thanks