The "Baseball House" at College

When I asked my son about living in the baseball house, he said "MOM!, I don't mind partying there, but I don't want to LIVE there!"  So he lived his Soph and Jr years in an apartment with 2 other players.

Fast forward 2 years:  Son had the opportunity to go back one fall semester coming off an injury in pro ball.  There was no where to live and he had to scramble to re-enroll, register for classes, and if it came to it, could commute.  He wound up living in a makeshift room, mattress on the floor, sharing a bathroom with several others....in one of the baseball houses.  He made it work and it was probably better than some accommodations in the minor leagues lol!  They called him granddad (I think he was 22, almost 23).   

Your son will figure it out. 

Seems to me there’s been a lot of energy spent on the assumption he’s Pinto and headed to Delta Tau Chi based on opinion.  There's beer in college, along with a lot of other possibly worse things. How our kids navigate those things, classwork and training is now mostly out of parental control by this point - we've had 18 years to set that stage. We’ve transitioned from a position of power to one of influence, hopefully it was gradual through the teen years and not a switch as they left home…

I believe that competence has a direct relationship with the size problems you can navigate or mitigate, and the only training is navigating and mitigating problems. A house with 8 ball players could be a disaster, or it could be the best experience of his life. If there are issues outside his boundaries, then he should attempt to resolve them. If he needs external help, I’m sure he’ll ask, but I’m guessing that parents won’t be his first stop.

My son lived with 5 ball players as a junior at Arkansas 2017. Every time I visited, there were nonresident players there – it was one of the places to hang out. I don’t know the stories, but I’m sure there are many (like what happened to my pellet gun). Two of the 5 including my son are still in baseball (4 were drafted), the others are very successful – one has his PHD in geology…

So, where is all this partying going on?  I've got one in school now, not living in Baseball house, but hangs out there every once in a while, and 3 nephews who recently graduated.  According to them, partying is something you have to really look hard to find.  Totally different world than when I was in college, where you lived for Thursday through Saturday and tried hard to recover on Sunday.  The "parties" at the baseball house are basically low key affairs, hardly the beer bong funnels and shotgun challenges of the past.  From what I've seen of my son's team and the penalties the coach has levied on anyone caught "partying", especially if underage, is not tolerated.  Honestly, the most drinking at the baseball house I've seen is done by a few parents after home games, which is often met with rolling eyes from their kids.

FWIW, at my son's former school (D2) there was party after party. If the baseball team wasn't throwing it, then the softball team was. If neither was, then some other team was throwing it. And, they were drink and toke fests.

My son, in talking to the coach, expressing that he wasn't sure if the campus scene there was for him, was told by the coach "Maybe it's time for you to start going to the bleeping parites and start learning to like it?"

How drunk did the kids get? At one party, one of the softball players hooked up with one of the baseball players. He was slender and had long hair. The story goes that the softball player, who is a Lesbian, was so drunk that she mistook him for a girl. And, he was so drunk that he didn't care who he was hooking up with at the party. (Sounds crazy. But, also so crazy that it would be hard for someone to make up this story.)

A friend’s daughter graduated from a HA D3 five years ago. They played Saturday-Sunday. She said it was very common for athletes to be drunk and or stoned on Saturday night.