re: Tournament Baseball is a scam

Travel ball certainly has it's negatives and positives. I think if a player is serious about playing baseball at a young age, it is a great thing. I never played travel ball but played little league and fall ball and after little league was playing pretty much year round in fall, winter, spring, and summer leagues which helped get me ready for high school. My brother who was two years younger than myself played on a travel ball team that played a shitload of games each year. They went to SoCal for weekend tournaments over 10 times a year, played a yearly tournament in Farmington, NM, Albequerque, Vegas and then a ton more in the Phoenix area and sometimes Tucson.

My brother learned to hate it. He was the starting 2nd basemen and had some good friends on the team but he never got to relax on a 3 day weekend. They were always winning as well. He played with kids who are playing in college and professionally right now. Tim Alderson (Giants '07 first rounder), Kevin Rhoderick (Oregon St), Raul Torres (ASU), Chris Davis (Cal St Fullerton), and Jason Jarvis (former ASU closer) among a few others I'm sure. The coach would sometimes fly kids in from California to play as well which was didn't make people on the team happy.

I think curveball's at a young age are fine if they are thrown mechanically correct. Most kids throw slurve's it seems which strains the arm more than a kid who can drop a 12-6 breaking ball. I played little league with Ike Davis who was the 2008 New York Mets first round draft pick and his dad Ron, a former Major Leaguer, had no problems with a 11 or 12 year old throwing a curve ball and straightened out our mechanics. He also usually only pitched the pitchers 3 innings a game so our best 3 or 4 pitchers could be used multiple times per week in combination and always be fresh.

When All Stars came, both my 11 and 12 year old years, we had 3 ace pitchers. We fell short in state my 11 year old year but won state my 12 year old year and went to San Bernadino Cali but didn't get anywhere close to the Championship to go to Williamsport. Darwin Barney (starting SS on both of Oregon State's NC teams) played on the Oregon team and Matt Tuiasosopo (Seattle 1st rounder in '04) was on Washington and he was like 6'2" as a 12 year old. Little League was a blast for me, and we dominated.