It's baseball all the time for us now. Practice twice a week. Often games twice a week. That's four nights a week of our lives taken by baseball...and we are not even on a tournament or select team! Not too happy with our league. We have several games that start at 8:00 pm on school nights. That means wrapping things up around 10:00 pm...for nine year olds...on school nights!
Youth league sports have gotten ridiculous. Jackson loves playing the game. Loves getting dirty on slides. Loves playing ball. He's progressing very nicely. He has a good coach and a good set of teammates. We like his team. But the overall culture places a lot of pressure on these kids. We have friends on select teams and the burden they put on these kids are terrible.
People wonder why so many kids burn out or why there are so many Tommy John Surgeries these days. We are over-working these kids and most of them, the vast majority, will not play any sort of pro ball. A few might get lucky to get scholarships for college. But this should be about fun. It should be about building teamwork and social skills. It should be about exercise and fitness. It should be about learning the game and good sportsmanship. But now it's mostly about obsessive adults, living out their failed dreams vicariously through eight and nine year olds. And it only gets worse as the kids get older.
