re: Travel ball as the source of our lack of fundamentals

It is Javi's fault

Are y’all really saying that LSU sucks at bunting because travel ball?

My god. This frickin place never disappoints.

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Are y’all really saying that LSU sucks at bunting because travel ball?

My god. This frickin place never disappoints.

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We are saying it sucks everywhere if you would bother to look.

Go frick yourself pussy

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We can’t have travel ball coach and travel ball dad continuously tell us they teach it, but have their product fail at such a high rate. You may teach it and practice it....but I have to question if it’s being done correctly?

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You all are nuts.

These kids aren’t coming to LSU off of the SE Texas Octane Rippers formed from the local rec leagues. By the time they reach LSU they have played multiple years of select and showcase ball, and in some cases 2 years in good juco programs.

They have been exposed to good coaching.

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Are y’all really saying that LSU sucks at bunting because travel ball?

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They really don’t know what they are trying to say

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Dont make my kid bunt, dont make him hit a sacrifice fly, dont make him be a pinch hitter, or I'll take him to a team where he will be the Man. So they get to this level deficient in skills that should be second nature by the time theyre in middle school.

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I’m saying there were noticeable problems with positioning of feet, bat and hands in multiple games I witnessed this weekend. I will leave one LSU player nameless. But there were at least 3 noticeable mistakes made in his approach to bunting.

Who should I blame for this?

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The player

I have 2 kids that play travel ball. I was the dad that held out on it for the longest but eventually when you get to the little league team and your kid is still the only one that can catch you have to give in. I think the OP has obviously heard some bad examples of travel ball but it’s like anything there are really good examples and really bad examples. I am an assistant coach on my 10 year olds team. We are coached by a former high school baseball coach. He has taught fundamentals from day 1. We teach bunting every hitting practice which is once a week. We teach proper form but not all of the kids respond to it perfectly. We have 3-4 kids on the team that can lay down beautiful bunts.

Just to give you an example of our practices. This was a fielding practice that I ran because our coach was out that night. This was a fielding practice.

1.) Fielding Bunt coverages...teaching who charges where and covers what base based on where runners are.
2.) First and third situations. Basically holding runners when there are runners on the corners.
3.) Routine ground balls...hard hit and charging
4.) Hot box situations. Where each kid should be in a hot box.
5.) Catchers throwing out base runners. We timed each of them at getting out of their stance and rid of the ball.

That’s about 1 and a half hours of fundamentals. We don’t always execute it perfectly. Each kid is still developing. We don’t do exactly the same thing each practice but it’s generally 4-5 sessions of fundamentals. I can promise you this stuff is no longer taught in Little League. While I’m disappointed in many aspects of travel ball and have concerns with some things the fundamentals and reps the kids get is the best of tournament ball. Our kids at LSU learned to bunt all along the way. They just don’t appear to practice it to keep it sharp. Most of these things are fine arts. Without continuous reps the art is lost.

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We don’t do exactly the same thing each practice but it’s generally 4-5 sessions of fundamentals. I can promise you this stuff is no longer taught in Little League.

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I am a very strong proponent of a strong local rec league. My older son plays travel and my youngest son does not enjoy baseball as much, so I hope there is always a strong local league for him to participate in if he so chooses.

I see both sides of the coin. My sons travel team has 4-5 coaches at each practice. The instruction time is there and the attention is there. But most importantly you have kids that are wanting to improve and will focus most of the time.

The largest reasons that rec leagues cant teach as much situation baseball is the lack of available coaches. It is impossible to teach more technical aspects of baseball when you can only get one or two coaches to try to organize 10-12 kids of widely varying abilities.


Travel ball has a place and the design of trying to cram tournaments into one weekend is the biggest problem. 4 games on one day is too many.

Not executing a bunt when you are an LSU caliber player is not the fault of anyone but the player. Period.