The MLB lockout thread

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

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...

Yeah, it's fairly horrifying as a parent.

I was shit at anything athletic until 6th or so grade, and while I didn't amount to anything as an athlete, your boy here needed sports. I'm not sure exactly what itch it scratched for me, whether it was competitive, just burning out the testosterone, seeing my skills grow, or some contrived need to win, or grind, or something. Probably some combination of all of it, but I needed it. Bad. Still do to some extent, I think. My knees are shit now and I can't run or jump so I'm not doing anything to speak of athletically. I guess I still get on the bike and let out some hate. But even then, there's still an edge, a little hostility, something that isn't getting addressed that used to with sports. These days, I probably let most of it out through working like a ****ing maniac and at least leveraging it into (hopefully) gross revenue.

I'm self aware enough to know that I'm not going to adequately solve the problem from a psychology standpoint, so I'll leave it there. The problem is, if I were operating in today's world, I might have been too far behind by 6th or so grade to even make anything happen, even to the extent that it did. Then it's hard to imagine what my life would have been like without sports. I'm deficient - something - as a broke down 38 year old. What the hell would my life have been without sports to take whatever edge off? Especially as a teenager when I was burning pretty hot.

I'm finding myself as a parent, finding it hard to get behind diving into sports as a 100% of the time activity at young ages. Philosophically, it's better to not waste their time on something that won't materialize. Especially if you have to be all in at a young age. But then I think about how important even middling sports were for me and I'm torn.

Now my daughter is 7 and at least right now, is horrible at everything sports, and doesn't seem to have much of an edge. Son is 3 and has a little **** you in him. Who knows what he'll become, but it's possible he needs sports in the same way I did.

So we'll see what happens. I just hope they have an outlet for whatever drives they have. And most importantly, I hope I don't **** it up for them.