An odd guy posted this on the General forum:
500 players were interviewed on travel teams in
the book
Think Better Baseball: Secrets from Major League Coaches and Players for Mastering the Mental Game by Bob Cluck
Results
55% of players are playing travel team baseball because their parents want them too
75% of players are not happy with the amount of time they have to travel
33% of players think they get better coaching from playing travel baseball
Disclaimers: I didn't read the book. The description of its findings comes from a source not rumored to be reliable. Still, it got me to thinking about mistakes parents make (and could avoid) which I think are pertinent to this forum. So, for what it's worth:
1. Kids love sports. They also love status. So if you take an athletic 12 year old, and put him on a "status" team, he'll love it, and probably do well. But that doesn't necessarily mean he has a natural gift for baseball or an undying love of the game.
2. Parents love their kids, and take pride in their kid's accomplishments. So parents tend to notice their kids successes, and ignore (or forget) their lapses. This makes parents tend to overestimate their kid's talent.
3. At some point in their teenage years, kids change. Those sweet little darlings become smelly, large, noisy, lazy, attitude-filled morons - except for those brief periods when they unexpectedly aren't.
So if you have a kid who you feel is talented, go ahead and get him on a travel team. Go to Florida or Arizona for the alphabet-soup World Series. Try to figure out what those guys are talking about when they go on, and on, and on about "rotational" vs. "linear."
But try not to make it The Most Important Thing In The World. That will come back to bite you when he's a teenager. If he seems to be burnt out, he probably is. Back off. Look for something fresh.
Don't ignore his other talents. The other one (music, math, hockey, whatever) may be "The One", not baseball. By the time he's in high school, he'll be ready to make that decision (and he's gonna make it, whether you like it or not.) Accept it. Be ready for it. If he decides to give his all for baseball, yeee-haw! If he decides to play the saxophone instead, well, yee-haw, too. (And put some feeling into it, dammit!)
I'm writing this here in the pre-HS forum because if you spend too much time on this board you can get tunnel vision. Most of the long time posters here (and the grand poo-bah himself) have boys who decided that baseball was "it" for them, and succeeded. But trust me, it's too soon for you guys to know. In fact, the more sure you are, the more likely it is that you're wrong. So enjoy the game for what it is now, but try not to look too far into the future. And try not to invest so much into it (whether it be money, time or emotion) that you won't be willing to listen if he tells you it's not his dream.
D'oh!
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