re: Can someone explain travel ball to me

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Disagree with:

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it's not as expensive as people will try to make you believe if you are on a team like that.

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Well, we pay a grand total of $0 to play.

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My experiences are they may not be dreaming of the MLB but they are just as delusional in their thoughts that their sons/daughters are going to be playing college someday bc they played in on the best low-level local team and won a bunch of meaningless rings at the Super Regional Fire Cracker tournament

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Seeing stuff like this is rare from what I've seen. Usually the people who act like this stick out like sore thumbs.

Usually in community ball 1/2 the team will be kids who's parents signed them up, they would be more suited to playing in the band and have zero interest or talent.

The coaches will spend 75% of their time trying to get these turds to pay attention and do what they are assigned.

Travel ball is a team a coach will build, usually by word of mouth or local social media ads.

There's try outs so if you suck or don't care you get shite canned.

The parents also pay a good bit for the season games cost, jerseys, snacks, gate fees etc etc etc Ours was usually $1,800.00.

Then you travel around to tournaments playing other teams that are built like yours

I loved the time we spent doing it, we had a great bunch of kids, parents and coaches.

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We are starting our son in baseball this year and stand on rec ball no matter what. That’s what I grew up on and that’s why my son will do. Getting ribbed for playing rec ball is temporary, but being a little entitled douchebag is a lifetime sentence.

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So here's the scenarios. Either:

1- your kid sucks. So you'll always take the stance you took in that post. Rather than admitting your kid is arse, you'll shite on the kids that aren't to feel better about yourself.

2- your kid is decent and you'll get tired of watching 80% of pitches being balls and 20 errors per game and you'll cave and end up finding a travel ball team.

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Rec ball is pretty much dead just about every where. Low level travel ball (which is what majority of kids play) is just the replacement for rec ball. It's little to no travel, and it's not as expensive as people will try to make you believe if you are on a team like that. 99% of parents aren't putting their kids in travel ball with MLB dreams.

It's simply the only place to play to get better at the game right now in most places.

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This will break the hearts and souls of the OT smooth brains who despise travel ball but don't have kids.












You're 1000% correct btw.

95-99% of the HS kids in the last 10 years has played travel ball, esp at the better schools.

There was a stark difference in the baseball knowledge and skills between those that played travel ball and those that played rec. And those differences kept the sometimes more physically dominant kids on the bench. The lack of base running knowledge and skills was probably the biggest measure. Next would be situational defense.

I coached several kids from 9u through 13u and all made their HS teams. Our practices could be structured to build the proper skills and add to them as time progressed.

Played roughly 10 spring tournaments usually 1 with an overnight stay that we all agreed upon. (This is when kids bond and make memories)

Rec was too political for me and that's why I made the jump to travel so early.

Dick measuring for the Dads. An opportunity for daydrinking on a Saturday afternoon for the moms.

I wonder if a lot of it is that the rise of travel ball has decimated the quality (at a basic level) of many local rec leagues. Like a lot of other things in our society - people are strivers and many of us are always pursuing above our station which means the things most natural and available become beneath us (both in an expectation sense and a real one as they’re backfilled with other people).

Travel ball is where most of the better coaches are found these days. And where kids can play catch without the risk of a youngster taking a ball off the noggin because one can’t handle a glove as good as another.

The question is really how early do you really want to emphasize baseball/softball/basketball/soccer development to a child at the level travel ball requires?

To be fair-there are many degrees of travel, not all so demanding of time and resources. And many kids WANT to give travel ball a try because that’s where their friends are.

Unfortunately, rec ball leagues in many areas are surviving by allowing travel teams to infiltrate which creates some severe mismatches and even possibly dangerous situations.

I’ve yet to see a Dixie Youth, Little League, etc organization handle the challenges of travel in a way that satisfies ALL the ball families in a community. It almost always comes down to playing just for fun vs playing to get better and still have fun.

It use to be take all the talented youth and put them on a team and play tournaments only. No league play.
Apply American free market economics and boom, there you have the modern day travel ball. Money grab with all aspects of the system.