My Struggle With Travel Ball

Much has been written regarding today’s spoiled professional athlete, how coddled they are. High schoolers (and younger) are wooed onto elite teams and bestowed sneakers and other gear. Is this necessary? Where does this begin? Should this be avoided? How are you and I involved?

A recent AJC article glorified travel baseball and soccer as a family-building experience. The family interviewed spends thousands each season on each of their three children, aged 9, 11, and 14. They spend an overwhelming amount of time racing around to games and practices. Mom’s spreadsheet tracks games, practices, uniforms, carpools. Vacations were “merged” with out-of-state tournaments. Without time to worship corporately with other believers, Bible Study materials are sandwiched into the busy schedule. Relationships were built with parents of teammates.

Many boys hop from travel team to travel team each season, searching for more playing time or a better team, running from negative experiences on former teams. Dads have visions of sons making the coveted high school team, earning college scholarships, drafted by a major league team. Travel team coaches and paid baseball instructors boast of the scholarships and draftees they have produced.

Travel ball tournaments (most called “World Series”, “Classic”, and “National Championship”) are held several times a month, often on holiday weekends. Teams wind up playing the same teams they play in regular season games…regardless of where the tourney is held. My son’s Shaw Park team traveled to Cooperstown…and played a team from East Cobb (there were ten teams from the northwest Atlanta suburbs in that week’s NY tourney). A Gwinnett team traveled to a Disney Tourney only to face several other familiar Gwinnett teams. A far-away weekend tourney can be a fun experience, but when they’re once or twice a month they not only become a drag, they also take a toll on young pitcher’s arms.

Coaches slow the game by calling each pitch, and force adolescent boys to throw repeated curveballs…against the advice of professionals. Teams are decked out in multiple sets of expensive uniforms. Multiple sets are certainly needed for the number of games they play. But must they be so elaborate? Is it that the coaches want to field the best-dressed team? Are matching team warm-ups, practice jerseys, and batbags (all bankrolled by the parents) necessary? To me the simplest uniforms look the best.

Whether the boys themselves? I witness travel team players wearily emerge from the parking lot head down, dragging the huge team-issue batbag with their name sewn on. The AJC actually ran a photo of the featured boys in this exact pose. Most play the game lifelessly, without emotion, as if they’d rather be somewhere else. This is repeated three-to-four times a week, often twice on Saturday, and sometimes Sunday as well.

By comparison, Rec Leagues play twenty games or less. The players are less apt to hop from league to league, and instead often play together season after season. This allows boys (and their parents, and even siblings) to develop deeper friendships. There are more smiling faces. Players miss games because of other important activities…Boy Scouts, academic testing, church retreats. A loss is not the end of the world.

Despite what you hear from the travel teamers, the level of play is not that much lower in rec leagues. You see the same mental errors in travel games. Pitching differences are not significant. There may be better athletes positioned as outfielders, but often they’re brooding because they’re not playing shortstop…and play suffers.

Girls have Gymnastics, Irish Dance, Ballet, Cheerleading, Horseback Riding Competitions, etc. Whatever happened to children playing after school, in the neighborhood, using their imaginations, building forts, playing house, riding bikes? Must each child’s activity be pursued for endless hours and dollars?

Families are certainly free to live life the way they see fit. My brother’s two children played soccer year-around from an early age. All four even refereed matches. Soccer even led them to take a trip to Europe. My nephew played on the high school team. Tutorials could be found around the house, primers on the multiple steps necessary to get college coaches to take notice. This fall he enters a small private out-of-state college on a partial scholarship, with hopes to transfer to a larger university after a few years. Where the time and money spent worth it?

The Burn-Out Factor. Do eight-year olds really need to play a sixty game season? Grooved “home-run” swings are taught to Pinto leaguers to take advantage of the short fences in coach-pitch leagues. But when the boy advanced to kid-pitch ball he doesn’t have the tools to hit normal pitching. The boy is washed up – at nine! Others tire from playing so many games at an early age, tire of grownups barking needless commands, and turn to IPods, skateboards, Playstations, or girls.

Experts say a child learns confidence by experiencing success at an activity. What defines success? If a child sticks to a single activity their entire childhood, most eventually plateau and progress no further. Does this defeat outweigh the previous positive experiences? Would it not be better to develop success and competency in numerous activities? Few become big leaguers, few become concert pianists. Better to reach adolescence, college, and the real world armed with the tools to excel in the classrooms of high school, college, and life.

The Bible teaches that the relationship between husband and wife should be the preeminent part of the family. If the parents have a strong and secure relationship, the children draw strength and security from that relationship and are able to develop normally themselves.

Instead parents often focus on career and their children’s activities, putting them ahead of their relationship with each other. Children then begin to place an increased sense of importance on themselves, thinking they’re more important than others around them, instead of learning to treat others as more important than themselves.

Is this increased sense of importance brought on by parents and coaches not the first step in a child becoming a coddled athlete? Is this the only way to produce an elite athlete?

Necessary Arrogance? Chipper Jones has often said an athlete needs a “necessary arrogance” to perform on the highest stages, meaning one must possess self-confidence and determination to excel under difficult circumstances, to succeed after past failures. This may be true. But the athlete’s loved ones are real people who must live with that arrogant athlete, who are effected by the actions of that athlete. Often left behind is a trail of broken relationships and single parent homes. While this happens in all areas of life, could it all be traced back to the “I’m most important” attitude being ingrained in today’s youth?

I am certainly not a model husband and father. I do see the ideal and “strive” toward the goal of leading my wife and family, and to serve God, wife, family, and others. There can be different paths to the goal…some harder, some less traveled. The makeup of my family and marriage does not lend itself to the travel ball path. For that I have no regrets…other things are just more important to me. My wife has often said if God wants my son to play baseball, He must have another way to get him there. More important are the relationships and lessons learned along the way – best from a variety of experiences.

Living in East Cobb, I’m certainly in the minority. I’d like to think it’s not because I’m cheap, but instead believe families and individuals are meant to focus more time on other activities. If a partial college scholarship or professional baseball are such long shots, the time and money would be better spent on higher return investments.

Case Study #1: My son played rec ball exclusively until he was about to turn thirteen. Blessed with a great attitude and athletic ability (mom’s side of the family!), he loved the game and worked hard to excel. He always loved fielding, and the “hit-a-way” device improved his hitting. With a late birthday, after playing at the Bronco level as a ten year-old, he moved up to the 13 – 14 year Pony League as an eleven year old. Though the smallest on the field, he rose to the challenge of playing at a higher level.

More than anything else, making this move was key to his development as a baseball player. At 13 he was able to fill in for the 15 – 17 year-old Colt team last fall…batting leadoff. Now he stands out all the more playing with and against travel teams his age. But at this point playing with and against boys his age will not aide his development.

Travel coaches want him on their team for their own best interests at heart: visions of tournament championships…not to coach and instruct him up to a high school / college / pro level. That’s what private tutors are paid for, I suppose.

Case study # 2: Brian McCann and Jeff Francoeur went the travel team route. McCann’s dad was a baseball tutor. Francoeur starred for Parkview in football and baseball. Their focus was on athletics. Their families had the resources to go this route. The recent SportSouth special on Francoeur detailed how his mother returned to work not long after Jeff began playing travel ball. As the baby of the family, when Jeff’s older siblings moved on, perhaps that left more parental time to drive to distant games and practices. McCann and Francoeur beat the long odds. All the talent and hard work has paid off for them, financially at least.

Both played East Cobb baseball. The Braves’ recent number one draft pick did as well, singing the praises of the tough competition, much tougher than high school. He played with East Cobb even though he lived over an hour away in Henry County. High school coaches encourage players to play summer and fall ball. Summer ball schedules can consist of daily games and travel throughout the South, and further…Puerto Rico, Charleston, Nashville, Cincinnati, and further.

Case Study # 3: A very family-oriented friend’s daughter decides to try soccer, and friends steer her into a competitive travel league. Time commitments are greatly understated. After a couple of seasons an injury gives the pre-teen time to reflect, and decides to give up the sport. Coaches meet with administrators, racking their brain on their perceived “failure”: What did they do to lose this girl? They could not understand that a family could have other priorities and interests.

African-American groups bemoan the lack of their race in Major League Baseball. Though an inner-city youth has basketball leagues available at an early age, and football can be picked up in middle school, the few rec baseball leagues available lack the developmental aspects of travel ball. Since few African-American youths play constant baseball year after year like their white and Latin-American peers, even fewer advance to colleges or the professional ranks. Like golf and tennis, baseball in America is becoming a sport of the rich.

To develop an elite baseball player in America today, is there an alternative to travel ball? I really wonder.