re: Tournament Baseball is a scam

Well, I'm going to say something nice about travel ball since everyone's killing it.

I played on a "travel team" of sorts (we played Rough Cut in Baton Rouge, but probably played 90 games total from April to July). Our coach was great...son played for LSU. We didn't have to pay out of the arse, raised most of the money ourselves, and got to play a ton of baseball against really good teams. We won USSSA Majors as 14 yr olds, NABF as 13 yr olds, but I promise if we hadn't won those tournaments it would have still been one of the best experiences of my life.

Two years with that team were two of the funnest of my life. We worked hard, but it was fun. We just loved playing baseball, and we got to travel all across the country and spend our summers with our best friends. I got a lot out of it...probably would have never played college basketball if I hadn't learned all that I learned from it.

I know people take it overboard...but that's going to happen with anything. FWIW, every kid on that team had a D1 scholarship offer in some sport (6 or 7 baseball, a couple football, me basketball). And there were no chronic arm injuries from throwing curves (probably never threw one until 13 yrs old)