Baseball is called America's pastime. That's because you can play it with a stick and a ball, the rules are simple -- and the heroes are likable and lovable with names like Whitey, Babe, Willie or just Joe. When we were kids we played ball around the clock. Some of the kids never played for a "team"...mostly because they weren't good enough, it cost money, or they didn't care enough to sign up. Kids in my 'hood just played to play.
In 1998, I moved to the suburbs....two doors down there were two brothers (Eric and Matt) that played all day long. Screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs at every close play, every home run -- all with a passion I once played with. In an odd way I was jealous of the passion they played with because now my passions had switched to coaching and projects around my new house. Their shrieks brought back so many good memories, they were sounds of joy (almost music to my ears). Sidebar: Eric and Matt went on to fantastic baseball careers.
Fast Forward to 2011
I coach an 11 year old traveling baseball team. I have a nice crew of boys that play the game well (their defensive statistics rival a major league teams, they throw strikes like a pitching machine and some can hit balls pitched speeds I know I couldn't have ever hit at that age).
But here are a few reasons why kids aren't any good at baseball anymore.
Knowledge: These kids don't know the game. They don't sit around on a rainy day Saturday and watch The Game of the Week on NBC listening to Vin Scully call a game (or even better, the B crew Tony Kubek and Joe Gariogola). Today they watch Sports Center and they know the great players and they know who gets them points on their fantasy team, but they don't understand why a guy would hit a ball to the right side to score a run versus swinging for the fence to get on TV.
Mommy Says: Kids today are very good at being told when to be somewhere, where to be, and how long they have to be there. That's a bad recipe for baseball. In baseball, there is no time limit and no rule on how far to lead off, or how hard to throw it. By age 11, a boy has played for 5 years -- but for the life of me today they don't know if the ball is 45 feet away from the catcher to steal home on a Passed Ball. Why is this? Their coach didn't say so. For the life of me, if a kid is leading off way too far at 1st or 3rd, a kid won't throw down. Why is this? Their coach didn't say so. They don't do these things because they've been programmed to do exactly what authority tells them...and if they don't they get yelled at to conform.
No Instinct: A secondary flaw to the "Mommy Says" reason is kids don't play like I did, or Eric and Matt did as late as the late 1990's. People learn by doing things hands on. Showing up for a practice and learning skills is nice and praises to the thousands of volunteer coaches in America for their time. But you'd be better served coaching kids by dropping them off at the park, hand them a tennis ball and some cheap wood bats, some cheap Target bases and then LEAVE for 2 hours. You'd return to find a kid who understood how to hit a crappy pitch the other way, a kid who knew how fast he was and how much he could get away with, and most important a kid who understands if the punk on the other team is showing you up you just deck him next time.
Other Sport Pressure: One of the biggest problems in Minnesota is the pressure to play Hockey or Basketball year round. Kids and parents are constantly struggling to keep up in the arms race of these two important (longer season) sports. Kids are running from baseball diamonds to hockey rinks, basketball gyms and training facilities....year round. See my blog on Youth Hockey for proof.
Choices/Toys: My 11 year old has access to Internet, he has an iPod touch, Sony Wii, Comcast On Demand, DVR, DVDs, Baseball Cards, a Swimming Pool, and every toy under the Sun. By most standards he's not considered spoiled. Compared to my childhood, he'd be Richie Rich. On top of the toys, his parents have managed to wedge him into 500 other activities. All of these things are all well and fine on their own, but smashed together it can be a mess.
So in summary, kids suck at baseball because we as parents over program, over indulge, and over coach them. The sad fact is there is no easy answer -- other than the fateful crossroads that most parents face - make Johnny specialize in one sport by age 11 so that they can be good/great at something.
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7 comments:
Very good piece Tony. You're absolutely right too. In Ireland, we all learned footie (soccer)on the field with friends or even our older brother’s older friends allowing us to join in. You watch, observe
and learn from just the experience alone. Probably a lot like the sandlot for baseball kids of yesteryear.
Today, kids at home and here are missing out on the simple, fundamental things in baseball, soccer, insert sport here. It’s a shame. They’re good memories too.
It is different today though, children are over protected, but they have to be, unfortunately.
Society dictates this. It has become dangerous to let your kid have the freedom they deserve, that we had. We were protected. We had neighbours, friends and family who would go above and beyond their means to help out if we ever faced danger. Our neighbors had a license to kick our backsides or give us a clip across the back of the head if we stepped out of line when our parents weren't around to see.
Thank you for the article. In spite of all the nonsense going on in Belfast in the 60s, 70s and 80s, we were very fortunate growing up. I know this more now than I ever have. Sports distracted us from the chaos around us . . . pre-Sportscenter. :-)
Tony,
This is your best blog yet. I love your idea of dropping them off at
the park by themselves. The only way for them to excel at baseball is
for them break the standard coaching mold. Growing up, the best games
were when we organized it.
By the way, I really miss the game of the week. Thanks Tony for the insights!
Tony:
Well thought out and well written piece. I'd add that when we were kids we had a certain amount of peer pressure to play and play well but if we failed, the sun came up tomorrow, we chose up sides again and just kept playing. No web updates on our "neighborhood record", no stats kept, no newspaper articles, no uniforms, etc, etc, etc. This has been said 1000 different ways but we learned the game without much cost to "failure". Today kids are afraid to "fail" and disappoint Mom and Dad and fail to justify the huge investment of time and money. We've created a monster in our desire to help our kids!
Z
Thanks for writing this, it made me think...always a dangerous diversion. I had a coach send me this a while back, makes for a good conversation starter. http://mlb.sbnation.com/2011/4/17/2117280/is-youth-baseball-dying-in-america
I generally disagree. My kid is better at 7 than I was at 10, and I played high school ball and was an all-star from age 11-15, and know coach pitch starts at age 6 here...it started at 8 in my town in California. But this baseball focus may be regional and climate-based, our summer travel season has already started, spring season just ended after a 13 week season...and look at the colleges that make the CWS each year...almost always sunbelt teams.
I think many of the issues you raise are indeed related to overscheduling and choice-utopia. Kids compete in so many things because the world is so uber-competitive, and kids are more a reflection of the parents than ever before (or at least the parents think so). Kids start earlier, play more sports and activities, and independence from parental guidance is not emphasized nor celebrated. I also think fewer parents help out with sports; I recall 3 baseball coaches and about 3-4 more dads that would help. Not anymore...makes practices harder to run with less individualized instruction. Thus the cookie cutter, one size fits all coaching.
I also think kids don't participate in good-natured debate as much as we did. My 7 year old boy has a hard time thinking how to defend one of his so-called statements of fact, in that he needs to convince me, not just tell me. I hardly ever hear kids making a persuasive argument as I think we did (my suspect memory notwithstanding), but it would be hard to know not being among them much.
With the ever-shrinking attention spans in this age we live in, baseball is bound to suffer. Talk to your Indian or Australian friends. The same thing is happening to cricket and rugby. Shorter games, fewer players, sponsors only wanting to participate if it's fast-paced and TV-ready. At least baseball games are still 9 innings and innings are still 6 outs, even if the fences are now shorter. I don't know this for a fact, but I think american youth baseball participation has been dwindling for years. Not every baseball team has english-speaking american heroes like they used to, who make too much money to seem part of the community—and in the absence of heroism, the numbers have to stand by themselves.
Now let me tell you what you should do. Disconnect your cable, and watch a baseball game via broadcast signal game on mute with the radio feed. If you are urban enough, they should sync well enough to really enhance the experience (cable is on about a 10 second delay). Then go to a game, buy a program and keep score, and bring a handheld radio (if they let you...some parks don't I've heard) and listen to the game. Let the perceived loss of nostalgia be replaced by the radio voices...they are the best. And enjoy the game being played by the game's best, talking about nothing but baseball for the entire game. If a kid can't sit and watch baseball, he shouldn't be playing it.
Your Dixieland Delight,
PT
Awesome article and spot on.
Strangely enough, I've found Sony's MLB The Show video game to be extremely helpful in teaching the "Knowledge of the Game" component to my 7 year old. His instinct for the game is sharper than anyone else on the field when he goes out there and plays for real. Most of the time, he is the only one out there who understands the difference between a tag and a force play, what base to throw to, and when to hold a base or advance. The downside is that he tends to mimic MLB players with the excessive waving while in the box. When you're 7, you really need to keep you bat still.
Such a great article and I agree with everything.
I'm nearly 40 and I grew up on a farm.
My dad was always busy in the spring and summer so that meant that my two older twin brothers and I had a lot of time to ourselves on a big country lot. And what did we do? Play baseball. We had several different games that we invented on our own. We'd play them for hours.
We taught ourselves how to hit, run, catch, field and get out of hotboxes.
When my brothers turned 10 and I turned 8, our dad registered us for organized ball.
My brothers easily made the travel team on their first try-out.
I had to wait 2 years as there was no travel team for kids my age, only house league. That was fine with me.
Without sounding too full of myself, the three of us dominated in our first organized season.
I remember hitting a homerun off a bounced-pitch.
We stole bases, picked guys off, gunned kids down from center, it was awesome.
And why were we able to do this? Because we played on our own. Playing against brothers gets competitive so all three of us were very aggressive in our approach to the game.
And because most of our coaches didn't seem to care all that much, we were the ones that decided when to steal, lay down a bunt, ignore the cut-off man (not all the time).
But today's a different world.
We never had Xbox's, copeous amounts of toys or most importantly, air-conditioning.
The house was always hotter than it was outside, so that's why we'd escape to the backyard to pretend we were Sweet Lou Whitaker or Jesse Barfield.
I often wonder if we would have loved the game so much if we had all those distractions?
Or if we had overbearing parents who forced us into sports?
I played hockey, baseball, basketball and particpated in track as well. I loved doing all of that.
But in the area where I live, by the time kids turn 8, they're one-sports atheletes. Two if they're lucky.
With hockey being the predominant sport of choice in my pocket of Canada, I see way too many kids living in arenas 12 months a year.
Their parents will tell you they love it, but I've spoken to my share of 12-year olds that wish they could quit. They're burned out.
It's a shame.
Like you said, it'd be better to drop kids off in a park and leave them for 2 hours.
I coach both my sons in ball and we have a great time. But times are certainly different. They'd rather turn on the Xbox than anything else.
But there's hope. With how poor the weather's been lately, and our rule for no TV or games during the week, we've been playing a lot of basement baseball lately.
My kids even play it when I'm not home, so perhaps there's hope afterall.
Love the blog. Go Wings!
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