Other Sports The MLB lockout thread

DJ's left nut · 12-03-2021, 12:20 PM

Yeah, I worry about that a lot with gymnastics and baseball. For right now we're only going around Missouri but shit, that started in gymnastics when she was 6.

I played on a few traveling baseball teams as a kid but not enough of them. Part of it was just that I wasn't a great player and didn't really want to go to Texas to be a utility infielder and part-time catcher and maybe get 2 starts and 8-10 ABs over 4 days. I wasn't starting at a super-high level as it was.

But once my teammates started going to 2-3 times as many of those events as I did, they just tore away from me. By my last season I couldn't get on the field at all. And I was at least good enough to play on some traveling squads until my teens. That made me as good/better than 80% of the guys I was typically playing against (especially defensively). In 3 years I went from the no-doubt starting SS to a mopup player.

And that was in the mid 90s. It's orders of magnitude worse now. We weren't looking at traveling until 11-12 yrs old. They have 8-9 yr old traveling squads now. Shit, we were just happy throwing strikes at that age. Worse, many HS coaches have traveling teams they organize and if you're not on that team, it's damn near impossible to get any attention at the HS level unless you're just clearly better than everyone. If you're just a good player, that kid that traveled with your coach all season is gonna get more opportunity than you will.

But hell man, it's no better in basketball or football. All the organized sports have gone haywire in that regard. At least in Hockey you've gotta spend a billion dollars in year 1 so you kinda understand what you're getting into...

12-03-2021, 12:20 PM	#11
DJ's left nut Sauntering Vaguely Downwards Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Columbia, Mo Casino cash: $-880901	Yeah, I worry about that a lot with gymnastics and baseball. For right now we're only going around Missouri but shit, that started in gymnastics when she was 6. I played on a few traveling baseball teams as a kid but not enough of them. Part of it was just that I wasn't a great player and didn't really want to go to Texas to be a utility infielder and part-time catcher and maybe get 2 starts and 8-10 ABs over 4 days. I wasn't starting at a super-high level as it was. But once my teammates started going to 2-3 times as many of those events as I did, they just tore away from me. By my last season I couldn't get on the field at all. And I was at least good enough to play on some traveling squads until my teens. That made me as good/better than 80% of the guys I was typically playing against (especially defensively). In 3 years I went from the no-doubt starting SS to a mopup player. And that was in the mid 90s. It's orders of magnitude worse now. We weren't looking at traveling until 11-12 yrs old. They have 8-9 yr old traveling squads now. Shit, we were just happy throwing strikes at that age. Worse, many HS coaches have traveling teams they organize and if you're not on that team, it's damn near impossible to get any attention at the HS level unless you're just clearly better than everyone. If you're just a good player, that kid that traveled with your coach all season is gonna get more opportunity than you will. But hell man, it's no better in basketball or football. All the organized sports have gone haywire in that regard. At least in Hockey you've gotta spend a billion dollars in year 1 so you kinda understand what you're getting into... __________________ "If there's a god, he's laughing at us.....and our football team..." "When you look at something through rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags."
Posts: 66,887	1 0