"Why children are abandoning baseball"

Kids may be overscheduled these days at times, but I'll take that over the alternative in 2015. Huck Finn isn't walking through that door. My kid's doing something to keep him occupied over the summer.

 

Who knows how much the "cussing at you" plays into it but since I took over my goddaughter's softball team last week, the attitude has been night and day, the parents have told me.

The 3 coaches who quit were yellers and jerks and punishers -- dropped a ball? go run 2 laps -- and the girls always seemed bummed after practice or games, the parents have told me.

I've had them for 1 game (25-4 loss, we're not so hot talent-wise) and 2 practices and the parents are happy because their girls are happy. A girl who had quit is coming back to the team.

Obviously, coach-player relationship is just one component of sports but in today's world perhaps it's the biggest component. Who wants to play for punitive assholes?

 

I don't know if kids are overscheduled or parents are overscheduled.

My kids are very active, but I did a lot more than they did when I was their age. The difference is, back then, parental attendance wasn't mandatory.

 

Who's meatball?

 

JackReacher.

I say that endearingly.

He's a big meatball. But that's OK.

 

Through the years my kids played in some kind of organized league or varsity team -- soccer, basketball, baseball, football, swimming, rugby, wrestling.

And the oldest complains that we didn't "let" him play football when he was young. (Actually, we didn't push it because we kind of liked having a few weekends free in the fall).

I think it's good to encourage kids to be active and find what they like.

But some of these travel teams are crazy and they reflect more the parents fear that their kid isn't keeping up with his peers than a good use of some kid's time and talent.

If you are having your kid play year-round baseball on several travel teams hoping to play varsity baseball or a college scholarship, the odds are way against you. College baseball players rarely get a full scholarship.

I am all for keeping kids busy but I don't want to spend thousands to travel everywhere to do it.

 

Yeah. You rode your bike to practice/games.

Families were bigger. My mom couldn't possibly chauffeur six of us to various activities.

 

Sports equivalent of Facebookification Syndrome.

 

It's an arms race. I think it's just about the high school team, in a lot of cases. That's how high the ante has been upped.

 

Do parent(s) attend every single minute of every single practice and game?

 

There are no parents other than us coaches lingering around at my kids' practices. A lot of them, like my wife, will take their younger ones over to the nearby playground to kill time for an hour, though, rather than go home.

 

They also had the practices a lot earlier. During baseball and basketball season you would just have to wait an hour after school until practice. These days, they would never let kids play unsupervised on the playground for an hour after school and they would never have practices at a time when the bulk of the parents would not be able to attend. Come to think of it, most practices today are almost never held at schools, it's always just a general park. I'm guessing that's for legal reasons.