I hate tee ball

I want play by play of her tee-ball exploits.

 

There is a lot of insane stuff out there involving youth sports.
I do not understand it.

We have not been fortunate enough to have kids, but if we ever are I will enforce a strict 'no craziness' rule.

 

Kids = craziness. It's unavoidable.

 

With kids you expect craziness and that's fine. It's just when the craziness comes from a parent or someone who should know better where it just gets ridiculous.

I coached basketball and football for a couple years, but had a run-in with an assistant the last year I coached football and I said, "I'm done. It's not worth the headache. I'll watch quietly from the sideline."

 

There was no such thing as travel teams when I played. But I do remember Little League running from the start of May to the end of July. I fully understand now, but 42 years ago my thinking was baseball season goes through September, so why did we stop in July?

 

We had Little League from April through June. When you made the "majors" (ages 10-12) there was Tournament of Champions and All-Stars that would take it through late July if you made it.

 

My sons only play rec and we start this weekend and we'll have something baseball related nearly every day until about July 20. It is crazy.

 

As a kid, I played baseball, basketball and football and did karate year round. My schedule seemed a lot easier then than the demands on kids today. Nobody did traveling anything.

But this was also in the day where every parent didn't have to hang around for practices. I have no idea when that crap started.

 

Because football started in August.

 

Having gone through the youth sports in my area with my two boys now in 8th and 10th grade, IMHO the youth sports world, at least in my area, way, way over the top. Is it nice for kids to get the opportunity to play sports year round? Sure, I would have loved it. But the competitiveness is simply killing the point of sports; especially in the lower ages.

Now that my boy is in high school, I get to see who actually has the talent to go on the more competitive arenas. Its a limited number of spots for the high school teams. I wonder about all those who trained oh so hard when they were 10-15, sacrificing family time and other social time, to continue to play those travel ball events, and now they are on the sidelines. Do they wish they had that time back? Played some other sports? Pursued other interests?

I admit, when we've gone on some travel ball trips, it was kinda fun but man it was alot of time and effort; just to go 2 hours away and stay overnight.

My boys were never the top players and my youngest quit LL when he was 9, but they found other outlets. My oldest now loves running long distance for some reason, but I have to hand it to him, he's running under 12 mins for 2 miles in track (sure not varsity but better than I can even imagine) and getting better all the time. My youngest does not play organized sports but when the kids are over on Friday afternoon, there's about 10-12 of them, they're randomly playing hoops on the driveway, football in the backyard, or simply playing tag and to me that's cool.

 

That's part of it, but it's not all of it.

Growing up, our town had a seven-game marathon every Labor Day at the big ballfield in town. They'd move the bases in for the minor leaguers, and hit every level with all-star games. The last two games would be the local Legion team and then, under the lights, the sandlot team.

They'd have 1,500 to 2,000 people there all day long, the local radio station did all the games, big door prizes every half-inning. It was a happening for that little burg.

And there was never any question of missing those games because of football. Kids took the day off from football and played in them. Today, 80 percent of the kids put their bats away in mid-June.

[oldmangetoffmylawnrant]

 

It's going to be a weird diamond season, I have a feeling.

Sis-14, the oldest, just started playing softball 3 seasons ago. Last season her team had a pretty bad season; she struggled at the plate and got torched on the mound.

Her mom was a good pitcher herself back in her own playing days; she told Sis-14 if she wanted to pitch this season or have any chance to pitch in HS, she would have to spend an hour or so every week on pitching workouts throughout the offseason, even including volleyball season (now her primary sport).

Sis-14 didn't pick up a softball from September until last week. She still claims she's going to pitch; I don't see it.

Twins Sis-A and Sis-B, now 9 and in the U10 division, are both going to take a shot at pitching too as well as SS-3B-2B. Their league has live pitching, but no walks.

About half the softball team was on the Pandas basketball roster in the wintertime and the dad who served as Sis's assistant will be the head softball coach.

But most of the players are 9 and they'll be really young in the U10 league. I have a feeling it'll be about a .500 year.

The twins have been pitching to each other in the backyard. They're talking about being a P-C combination duo.