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This is basically what Iam3rd's Development Academy is for soccer. No clue how successful they are but it's a good balance.

We live right in the heart of BIG TIME YOUTH BASEBALL in Lexington so a lot of my kids friends play. They have replica jerseys with City Connect alternates, lots of eye black, each kid has their own helmet and back pack with 2 bats, all the coaches are decked in in official MLB gear, and I tend to forget my kids friends are 5-8 and playing Tee-Ball and Coach Pitch.

Did anyone else's little league coaches carry around bats and gear in one of these in the 80's and 90's or was that an experience unique to Russell County?

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I'm all in on the gear. I think it's fantastic. Some of the old school coaches still hate it but most have at least accepted it. Just think about when you were a kid looking at Eastbay. Now that shit is affordable and easy to get. Love the alternate uniforms.
 
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I'll tell you what I'm out on. Bats costing $300+.

Hey dipshits (kids). If you seldom make solid contact with the ball it doesn't make a lick of difference what bat you use.
 
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Baby Pretzel has several years before he's in sports, and I am already dreading it. Not because I don't want him to play - I hope he finds something he loves - but I don't want to get sucked into the travel ball bullshit. My husband played HS baseball, went to the state championship, and then softball for a billion years before he took up powerlifting. He says now he won't go bananas as sports dad, but we both know he's full of it.

I hope Baby inherited his dad's hand-eye coordination and not mine. If he got mine, well, I guess we'll have a lot more time in middle/high school than most travel ball parents!*

* Who am I kidding, he's already off the charts for height and strong. We're in for it.
 
I'm not hating on it because I would have been all in as a kid, my dad use to put team logos and my number on my plain white youth football helmet. It's just funny because no other sport is really like that and the majority of these kids can't even tie their shoes yet.
 
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What’s really fun are the hot ass summer money grab tournaments in some small town when you just end up playing a team from Lex anyways.
I know a couple of the guys that rent out Woodford and Harrodsburg and they make bank. Their costs are field rental, umps and someone to take the gate money. One guy does it as a full time job and rents fields all over central Kentucky. I bet they clear 10K a weekend at the bigger facilities.
 
This is basically what Iam3rd's Development Academy is for soccer. No clue how successful they are but it's a good balance.

We live right in the heart of BIG TIME YOUTH BASEBALL in Lexington so a lot of my kids friends play. They have replica jerseys with City Connect alternates, lots of eye black, each kid has their own helmet and back pack with 2 bats, all the coaches are decked in in official MLB gear, and I tend to forget my kids friends are 5-8 and playing Tee-Ball and Coach Pitch.

Did anyone else's little league coaches carry around bats and gear in one of these in the 80's and 90's or was that an experience unique to Russell County?

s-l1200.jpg
Thats what we used in SWVa, I thought all teams used these until I moved to Central VA and they had real bags designed for baseball.
 
-yearly visit to LJS. Delicious. Immediate self-loathing.

-tennised for 3 hours yesterday AM. Jumped in the pool (55 degrees). Then gym/trainer. Sore.

-learn tennis. Youngest opted out of basketball prior to HS, told her she had to do something. *much* better experience than AAU(or basketball in general for that matter)... more palatable/refined parents/crowds.

^unless you have a stud/phenom Ala Brax's eldest... get them into something they can do for life. Not too many 40+ basketball/baseball leagues in most places.

-had to re-home a Llewellyn Setter after she got nippy with kids. Had over 5k in that dog... but she was birdy, and I couldn't run her enough. Trainer found a retired guy in Western Tennessee... and i ended up with the best family dog in the world in Buster the beagle. Worked out best for all parties.
 
Back in the day, the coach would rollout one dark green canvas bag - complete with 2 helmets (one normal size, the other for Engleberg with a rotten ear pad. ) Two bats, 3 mud-crusted balls, a scorebook, and catchers gear so old Yogi Berra blushed…and big league dreams.

And it was awesome.
 
My favorite thing about the sports obsessed travel ball for their 4 year old always talking about sports and sports dads is 95% of them are obese slobs. The irony is great but I can’t really point it out to them when they give me weird looks when I turn them down for my kid to join because they’ll beat my skinny ass up. They’re clearly not health conscious so I dont really even understand the point. Also, ironically enough, 90% of the Girl Scout dads I saw when my daughter did the soap box derby thing last year were fairly fit and trim. Maybe the less athletic guys learned to actually workout for exercise instead of sports and that’s an easier routine to maintain over time?
 
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We literally went to Panama City a few years ago and played a team from nicholasville. Nobody is denying it’s a racket. But it’s a FUN racket most of the time

Spending the weekend at some podunk ballpark, playing the same teams you played last week, getting sunburned while shittalking with the other psycho dads and then finishing off the the night with the team at some local Mexican restaurant, getting housed on margaritas and ice cold beers. Nothing like the post-baseball tourney beer, fellas. IYKYK
 
Back in the day, the coach would rollout one dark green canvas bag - complete with 2 helmets (one normal size, the other for Engleberg with a rotten ear pad. ) Two bats, 3 mud-crusted balls, a scorebook, and catchers gear so old Yogi Berra blushed…and big league dreams.

And it was awesome.
The Little League league I was in was 9-12. You got drafted and you were on the same team for the next four years. The coach had 4 bats.

Eastman 28 inch - 24 oz - you used this bat when you were 9
Eastman 29 inch - 25 oz - you used this bat when you were 10
Eastman 30 inch - 26 oz- you used this bat when you were 11
Eastman 31 inch - 27 oz- you used this bat when you were 12

The best player on my Little League team turned into a real life Bull Durham (even played there for a couple years). Played 1976 minor / independent league games. Never made the show. 244 career home runs. Dude was a bad ass in Little League.

Baseball Reference Jeremy Owens
 
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-yearly visit to LJS. Delicious. Immediate self-loathing.

-tennised for 3 hours yesterday AM. Jumped in the pool (55 degrees). Then gym/trainer. Sore.

-learn tennis. Youngest opted out of basketball prior to HS, told her she had to do something. *much* better experience than AAU(or basketball in general for that matter)... more palatable/refined parents/crowds.

^unless you have a stud/phenom Ala Brax's eldest... get them into something they can do for life. Not too many 40+ basketball/baseball leagues in most places.

-had to re-home a Llewellyn Setter after she got nippy with kids. Had over 5k in that dog... but she was birdy, and I couldn't run her enough. Trainer found a retired guy in Western Tennessee... and i ended up with the best family dog in the world in Buster the beagle. Worked out best for all parties.
We had a beagle, excellent dog with kids, his name was Briar Patch!
 
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We literally went to Panama City a few years ago and played a team from nicholasville. Nobody is denying it’s a racket. But it’s a FUN racket most of the time

Spending the weekend at some podunk ballpark, playing the same teams you played last week, getting sunburned while shittalking with the other psycho dads and then finishing off the the night with the team at some local Mexican restaurant, getting housed on margaritas and ice cold beers. Nothing like the post-baseball tourney beer, fellas. IYKYK
A tourney like that or the Pigeon Forge one we went sounds way better than the little rinky dink bs around here.

Got a buddy in STL with a kid on the MLS first team. Their travel is legit insane. They're taking flights a couple times a month. Cool cities but good lord.
 
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My fifth grade girls have played about 80 basketball games since September. Furthest we have traveled is Louisville (two hours) once and we got a nice taste of audabon elementary and their parents so we will probably stick to the 270 and 606 area codes from here on out. Maybe venture into the 859 if we have to.

I have at least six girls that love it and I enjoy coaching them. Of course I don’t have any real hobbies besides ball so it’s not like I’m missing time fishing or whatever else an early 30s father of three does.

The challenge is about to be my little boy starting to get balls deep into the sport. He’s never really given a shit until the last couple of months.

The newest addition (girl, will be six months old tomorrow) will be starting pitching lessons any day now.

For those of you who have girls and have played some travel tournaments you realize you can have a team full of trash cans with one stud pitcher and win tournaments.

Lex/BG parents be thankful you have decent rec leagues. Because it’s all booty in these rural towns. We are so small that most of our travel girls still play league ball for extra reps. It’s easy to spot the travel kids.
 
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You guys are making this horse purchase sound better by the minute. The barn is only about 15 minutes from the house, she does the majority of the work herself, and the few times a year she does go to a show it’s only 45 minutes down the road and costs me around 100.00. Guess I should thank my lucky stars and quit bitching about the damn beast.
 
I'm all in on the gear. I think it's fantastic. Some of the old school coaches still hate it but most have at least accepted it. Just think about when you were a kid looking at Eastbay. Now that shit is affordable and easy to get. Love the alternate uniforms.
“All in” 🙄

Doesn’t even begin to describe it. Dude has a book of historical threads sitting on his coffee table.
 
Several times I was the best player on my team when I was a kid. I can’t really recall those teams ever being very good. I was a solid rotation player but you didn’t want to build your franchise around me.
 
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I designed uniforms for my imaginary Nerf basketball league that I played by myself in the hallway.

The San Antonio Warthogs had a teal jersey with brown and gold highlights.

The New York Titans (pre-Nashville) were grey and black with a gargoyle mascot.

The Louisville Racers knocked off the Pacers logo with an R instead of a P and a horse silhouette instead of a basketball.

You know, normal 10 year old stuff.
 
I'll tell you what I'm out on. Bats costing $300+.

Hey dipshits (kids). If you seldom make solid contact with the ball it doesn't make a lick of difference what bat you use.
If you think that is bad don't get your kid involved with golf. Buying them a new set of clubs every couple of years because they've outgrown the last set you bought gets expensive. I never spent a ton of money on expensive clubs like some parents and would buy stuff from eBay that was a couple of seasons old. I saw a lot of kids with the newest stuff every year. It's crazy seeing a 10 year old with the newest Scotty Cameron putters and Titleist or Calloway clubs every year. They were easily sinking 3 grand for a 10-12 year old and even younger.
 
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How on earth did I miss all the travel ball discussion.....

My thoughts.

It really depends on where you live and frankly if your kid loves the sport or not. We live in Versailles and our league is fine for tball and coach pitch but at that point when it gets to kid pitch, there's only enough kids left to have two non competitive teams. Other counties' around us like Anderson are in the same boat, so both leagues have to host each other to play other competition. We tried it with my older son one season and 75% of the kids in that league couldn't throw with accuracy, barely could catch, were fairly horrible at the plate, and frankly had little baseball knowledge because they not played much ball. (Not their fault)

Our boys have played travel ball in some form since their tball days and frankly them playing down to our local leagues talent would do nothing but hurt them. So we are kind of either forced to play travel ball, or drive to Lexington for them to play in a league that's packed with politics, daddy ball, and in many cases league all star teams can be preselected before the season even begins.

So in some cases, travel ball can be kind of a necessity like in our case, and in other cases, its parents simply wanting to get away from league BS politics and they move to travel. Others are insane and think at 6 their kids should be playing Triple A level ball and be out of state every weekend with a 100+ game schedule.

With that said, I do think there are many organisations that even at young ages go way overboard with the amount of games they expect these young kids to play. Some even want your kid to basically only play baseball year round, never letting your child have the opportunity to play football, basketball, etc because of fall ball, winter sessions, and basically never slowing down. And that's fine for the parents that want that, but after my youngest son had some growth plate issues last year and speaking with a several sports doctors at UK, the number of youth arm and shoulder issues are on a tremendous rise because too many kids are only playing baseball year round, and too many coaches are not using pitch counts correctly. Our local travel team played one of the main Lexington leagues top All Star teams in a summer travel tournament game a couple years ago and their 10 year old pitched over 100 pitches in one game. AS A 10 YEAR OLD. Does winning a stupid tournament game at 10 years old warrant a coach or parent risking their kids arm? To some, I guess so.

We've had our boys on both local travel teams that play around Central Kentucky and they've played on Double A level Travel teams in Lexington that focus on USSSA only tournaments, some hours away, and sometimes travel states away for baseball. Currently we decided as a family that local travel baseball is what fits our family the best. The boys aren't forced to be year round baseball players but get excellent instruction and improve yearly, we travel at max an hour away, not states away, and they have the ability to play other sports which is good for their bodies and as athletes. Neither of my sons at 10 & 12 are ready to commit to baseball as their future sport and Im not pushing them too. Them playing other sports like Football, Soccer, and Basketball has been great in their overall athletic abilities and taught them different things they have applied to baseball too.

So to the people completely shitting on youth travel teams, E.A.D. Being around this stuff as long as I have, I know far too well that league ball, especially several in Lexington, have its own set of issues. There are some insano league coaches and league all-star team coaches, just as there are with some travel ball teams and coaches. To the leagues and travel teams really pushing young kids to play year round, I caution them because I can give you dozens of names of amazing kid athletes that simply got burned out with baseball by the time they got to high school and simply had enough with the sport.

Do I wish every community could just have a great, local league like I grew up with in Shelbyville, and that kids didn't have to travel at all for youth baseball? Sure. But that's not always the case anymore. Travel Teams, Little Leagues, Tournaments, and dumbass parents are all to blame for where the game is now and unfortunately with the demise of leagues nationally and growth in travel ball, it's not going to end anytime soon. With those here with young kids playing baseball, just be smart, join a team or league you feel your son will most importantly have fun in, have good instruction and training, and will put your kids health first and growth first.

When they get older, and they've decided baseball is their sport, sometime in Middle School, they probably should be looking at joining a higher level travel team that does travel further to play high level competition so they are ready for the challenges of high school ball. When High School comes and they want to purse baseball into college, they need to be on a showcase team that is playing nationally in front of college coaches, is working on promoting the team's kids to college coaches and making sure they are at college workouts and skill showcases to maximize his chances of making a college team. It's all a process these days and much different then when many of us played many years ago.

For more questions, just reach out to @B Rax because that dude just makes Baseball Killers, one after another.

Seacrest Out
 
Short version :
Travel ball is a must for some who do not have competitive league locally. For others, it is just parents trying to live their sports dreams thru Little Johnny, time, money, and risk of fatigue / burnout be damned.
 
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