re: My Non-travel ball playing nephew just made the HS baseball team

The bottom line is that people who shite on all travel ball are just as bad, well almost as bad, as the people who pay $1500/year for their son to be on some travel ball team and throw curveballs at 8 y/o.

In general, travel ball is a nice concept because no 10 y/o wants to practice all the time and it allows a kid with a desire to improve to get plenty of in-game reps, particularly at the plate, all summer if he'd like. Very few practices occur even with the most elite teams once the season really picks up, so you get a lot of shite shows in the younger classes, and there is no doubt that it is ruined by parents, but that is true of ALL youth sports, so it's a wash. If travel ball didn't exist those parents would be ruining Little League instead.

As I mentioner earlier in the thread, travel ball has potential to help kids of all talent levels because it should segregate the players and allow competition and coaching that is useful for all of the kids on the team.

I played travel ball starting at 10 y/o, and it was in its infancy at the time. At the time there was only one USSSA Major team in the Acadiana area for 10 and under. Let that sink in for a minute. I was on a dogshit Little League team coached by the editor of the local paper and I was significantly better than everyone else on my team. As a result, I got basically no coaching because Timmy and Johnny couldn't catch pop flies and 80% of practice was devoted to fundamentals that I had learned years before being on more talented teams in younger classifications. My dad never played baseball so he was useless with any sort of outside instruction, although it wasn't for a lack of trying.

They organized a USSSA AA team with kids my age from around the league. The motive was to bring together the kids who would likely be "all-stars" and get them playing together in preparation for the 12-year old Little League season - the ones who go to Williamsport. We probably played 25-30 games a summer and I got much better instruction that was tailored to my skill level. That being said, we always played rec ball too. Travel ball was a compliment to that once it ended. Over the years it has taken on a mind of its own and the problems have blown up, but that is true across all youth sports so I'm not going to knock travel ball for it. Depending on a kid's situation it may be a great opportunity or it may be a complete shite show. Once high school came around we played on the school team in the summer and as a senior I played on a regional team with college prospects.

I will say this - we never had to pay for anything to join the team. We had a small sponsor for our shirts and we bought our own pants. No team bags and banners and matching helmets and all that shite. That is a huge knock from 'anti-travel ball' folks, and they've got a point. It is a shame that any parent who wants a kid on a team can find someone who will take their last $1,000 dollars and stick Timmy in for 3-innings a weekend. The bottom line is that travel ball can be a nice option for kids of all talent levels but there are a ton of pitfalls that give it such a bad rap.