"Why children are abandoning baseball"

Typically, yes...

 

Having been through the youth baseball wars, I think I can attest to why it's falling off.

Our son would be a 14U baseball if he were playing this year. But this was the first year he didn't have the fire for it and this is a kid with a room full of trophies from the past seven years.

He got the basketball bug - just as I did at his age. He loves basketball, is trying soccer (he digs the goalie thing) and even laced up skates to learn hockey.

Every year baseball was the same dance. Go into the season with high expectations. Three weeks in, half the kids can't hit, half the parents bitch, the coach's son never gets benched, you're out $400 a weekend in some damn tournament to watch your kid's team gets crushed and, eventually, you count the days until the season is over.

One year our son's travel team won our state tournament. Yet even that was marred as he and two other players learned the day before it started that they wouldn't be asked back because the coach wanted an all-star team to try and get on ESPN's World Series the next year and needed "upgrades" at 1B, CF and P. (I can't complain too much as the year before our son was recruited by him, too. We just didn't expect to get booted after 1 year.)

At least in basketball or soccer, the action is constant and the top players are apparent within seconds. No standing around waiting for the kids who can't hit to finish up. My son and I had many great moments during his baseball years but, as good as he was (and watching him hit was both nerve racking and thrilling, if that makes sense), I'm glad it's over.

 

Oh, this topic. I could go on and on and on. But, this book explains it a lot:



Wholly focused on the main culprit: parents. Sad to say, I've been one of those -- not to an extreme degree, but I have had my moments. My son just turned 13 and is a pretty good pitcher. I have no visions of him playing as far as college, but I think if he keeps going he can be decent in high school. Fastball in the mid to high 60s, really nice changeup, hasn't put too much wear on the arm. Yay us!

He is on a team that works for us now, primarily because I'm way way way away from it all. He's happy. But it took us a while to get there. I've often wondered whether it's worth it. Certainly my older son who dropped baseball at age 7 and just swam (not very competitively for a long time) has had a less stressful sports existence, and he's now on the HS varsity and is going to pick up water polo.

There's a real business motive for a lot of these asshole coaches too -- if they don't get people believing that you need to commit early, they don't get paid. Basically if your child is under 12 years old and a coach tells you he's falling behind because he hasn't had private lessons or isn't in the right program, run away. Run far away.

When my 3-year-old gets into it -- he isn't already, so I guess he has no hope for the 4U travel circuit -- I'm going to be the biggest softest big lug of a softie you've ever seen coach. The other way just doesn't work. At all.

 

My kids aren't really into sports. They are active, but not really into organized sports. My two youngest play basketball in the winter (one night a week of practice and games on Saturday) for two and half months. My oldest played and tired out for two school teams but failed to make the cut (not practicing will make do that).
My kids have tried golf, karate, basketball, flag football and gymnastics. We have a trampoline in the backyard and a basketball goal. They (7,9 and 12) are just as content riding bikes and scooters at the house.
We do hikes and go camping and family activities. On the weekends, I do yard and house work.

Honestly, I'm not running three kids to two or even three practices a week and games on weekends for an extended period of time.

 

Hooray, another piece speculating on youth sports numbers are declining.

They multiply like thinkpieces on Game of Throne rapes and #hottakez on Steph Curry's kid.

They all follow a formula: Find a rust belt town/hometown of sports legend, tell anecdotal tale about how it used to be so much better, weave in some threads of how they may have to consolidate with another town to keep the sport(s) going, sprinkle in some factoids about the pro sport(s) and a nugget or two from an academic type along with some numbers from a trade association and you got a story.

Watch how easy it is...

Once a ticket out, baseball no longer an option

By Jay Farrar

SWIFTON, Ark., -- George Kell's presence can't be understated in this speck of an Arkansas farming community on the west coast of the Mississippi River delta.
Kell, who died in 2011, was a Major League Baseball player and later long-time broadcaster for the Detroit Tigers. He was inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame in 1984.
He, along with his brother Skeeter, have their names emblazoned as the city limit signs on both ends of the Rock and Roll Highway, U.S. 67, once the main connection between Little Rock and St. Louis.
The likes of Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis used to play the beer halls and juke joints that dotted the road in the 1950s, but the music and baseball have died in Swifton.
George Kell Field sits empty most days. The high school that once played there, consolidated with Tuckerman, another speck on the road about five miles away. Kell Motor Co., the eponymous car dealership 20 miles away, still sponsors American Legion baseball, but it is a regional All-Star team composed of players from across five counties and none from Swifton.
The town of Swifton, some 1,200 souls, hasn't had a Parks and Recreation department in a decade as the town's children have resigned themselves to one of the two fates that await them: Farming or leaving. The third choice, baseball, is no longer there.

 

Do you think declining participation is a concern for MLB in the future?

 

What if your kids absolutely loved sports, would you run them to sports then?

 

I don't think it is, Dick.

How many people (particularly the women) who follow the NFL played football?

 

I tend to lean this way, too. It's worth keeping an eye on, but baseball is a night out in the summer.

Look at hockey. The Blackhawks are enormous in Chicago. Can't get a ticket. How many Chicagoans know how to skate?

 

If it takes 30 minutes to drive to practice that lasts an an hour or two, they probably stay or go shopping or something.

 

I had an interesting conversation with my son's basketball coach last October. I liked the guy when he coached my kid the previous year in a youth league. My kid is a decent basketball player, nothing special, but he's really scrappy and that sort of put him at a level above most of the kids, with the exceptions of the two kids who are wearing size 9 shoes at age 8. The best player on the team is one of my son's best friends. His dad is 6-8 and played D1 ball in college and his wife is 6-3 and also played in college (Division II, I believe). The other kid, also friends with my son, is adopted, but is just an athletic beast.

The coach calls all three of us and urges us to sign our kids up for his traveling team. Practices 2-3 times a week and games on Saturday. Initially, all three of us passed. My son and one of the other kids had just finished football and thought it was a bit much to go into that kind of a schedule that quickly. The league also went from November to April which just seemed ridiculous. The coach talked the super tall kid into playing. His dad joked that the coach, "broke us down and got us at a weak moment" I don't blame him for a second, his kid will almost definitely have the size to play in college and it's his son's best sport, while my kid and the other kid both favor football.

The coach really put the guilt trip on me when he called. He started saying things like, "Denying your son an opportunity" and crap like that and I finally said, "You know what, he's eight. He doesn't need to be traveling across the state to play basketball."

The whole thing seemed almost surreal.

 

I grew up in Brooklyn playing every sport on the playground, from punchball to basketball to off the wall tennis. While there certainly was competition, there was zero emphasis on organized sports. A few kids played little league baseball in the spring but barely any of us played on any youth teams. I made my HS basketball and tennis teams without having ever played either sport formally. Granted, I probably would have been far better if I had been in a more structured youth program, but I never lost the love for either sport.

Now, I live in a town with very well organized travel and in-town programs in many sports. But kids don't seem to play sports for fun. Our school playgrounds never have kids playing pickup hoops or playing 5 a side soccer. And it seems that for sports like soccer or baseball, you are screwed if you aren't in the travel programs by the third grade and are willing to commit year round to a sport.