Baseball Practice Drills – Pickle

A common situation in baseball is the run down.  A player caught in between two bases – either one of them being safe.  Executing a proper defensive set up is important to getting the out. Pickle is a classic baseball practice drill you can add to your workouts.

What you need (set up):  Set up a number of stations that is divisible by three.  You will need three people per station (2 fielders, 1 runner).

All distance between bases is 30 feet (in all directions)Baseball Practice Drills

How this drill works: The fielders need to work the ball back and forth in an attempt to get the runner out.  The runner needs to try to advance to third base or get back safely to second.  You can award the fielders two points if they get the runner out.  One point if they get the runner back to second, zero points if the runner gets to third base.  Play the game until the fielders get 5 points.  Rotate the players at this point.

Result:  Both the runners and the fielders will understand what they need to do when they are in this situation – both on offense and defense.  Rundowns occur often in Little League ball, and even in high school league with regularity.  It is good for young players to know how to get the out.

Note:  Once the players have mastered this aspect of the drill, then you should advance it to the standard tactic where players are backing each other up and rotating as the rundown advances.

Technorati Tags: baseball, Pickle, baseball practice drill, high school

Source: http://www.baseball-tutorials.com/baseball-practice-drills-pickle/15/

The BEST High School Baseball players in the country- (Part 2)

A day in the Life the best high school baseball players in the country.

JEREN KENDALL | 2014 Vanderbilt Baseball Commit

COLE TUCKER | 2014 Pittsburgh Pirates 1st Rd. Draft Pick

JOSH MORGAN | 2014 Texas Rangers 3rd Rd. Draft Pick

JACOB GATEWOOD | 2014 Milwaukee Brewers 1st Rd. Draft Pick

RYAN JOHNSON | TCU Baseball Commit & Top 2015 MLB Draft Prospect

Youth baseball is 90% mental

Jim Wohlford, a Major League outfielder who played in the '70s and '80s said, "Baseball is ninety percent mental half the time." He was talking about Major League baseball. Youth baseball is ninety percent mental, period.

Ted Williams said, "Hitting is 50% from the neck up." He was talking about Major League hitting, where the ball players have nothing else to do all year. In youth baseball, where practice time is a tiny fraction of what a Major Leaguer has, you cannot make much progress on anything but the mental aspects.

Why? There are only about 40.5 hours of practice in the entire season of a youth baseball team. After the first year or two of a player's career, typically around age five and six, physical things like batting and pitching mechanics change only at a glacial pace. Pro hitting consultant Oscar Miller says it takes 10,000 swings the new way to change your swing. That's because your swing must be instinctive. Since you have already grooved the "wrong" way be swinging 10,000 times, you have to swing thousands of times to get rid of the old way and thousands more to groove the new way. Does a youth baseball coach have time to closely supervise 10,000 swings of each of his players? Not even close.

It takes at least ten seconds to do one swing against a ball on a tee or shadow swing (no ball). 10,000 x 10 = 100,000 seconds. That's 100,000 ÷ 60 = 1,667 minutes or 1,667 ÷ 60 = 27.8 hours---per player! That does not include warm-ups or breaks.

Not only do you not have enough time to closely supervise 27.8 hours of swings every ten seconds for each of your twelve to fourteen players, your players simply do not want to swing the bat in a drill 10,000 times.

Finally, even if you had the time and your players had the motivation, doing so would probably hardly change their success at all and might even make them less successful batters. That's what happened to me. I did do the 10,000 swings. More actually. I had a prettier swing afterward. Got lots of compliments. But my hitting seemed to be a little worse! My original, unprofessionally trained swing used a shorter stroke. Switching to the traditional longer stroke seemed to have a bigger negative effect on my hitting than achieving optimum mechanics had a good effect.

Arizona State University head baseball coach Pat Murphy said, in the 11/99 issue of the American Baseball Coaching Association's Coaching Digest, "I believe coaches tend to overcoach and overanalyze the mechanics of the swing. I believe the mental side of hitting makes all the difference."

People reading this probably know a player with a tremendous work ethic or a youth player with a "stage" father who got his son tons of professional lessons. The typical result is that the kid looks great when he swings, but he doesn't hit that much better after all the lessons.

In the pros, they have both the time and motivation to work on both their mechanics and their mental attitude. Thus Wohlford's comment that "[Major League] baseball is ninety percent mental half the time." Because of the far less time and motivation, "Youth baseball is ninety percent mental all of the time." In youth baseball, you absolutely do not have the time to work on batting mechanics and few, if any, of your players have the motivation to do the necessary amount of swings to make a change.

Conclusion #1: Do not mess with your players' mechanics.

This applies mainly to hitting and to a lesser extent to pitching and fielding of grounders and throwing by fielders.

Self-confidence is crucial to success in hitting, pitching, and fielding grounders.

Conclusion #2: If you do not have time to fix "incorrect" mechanics, you must not breathe a word about them, because if you do, you will hurt your players' confidence.

It may take ten thousand swings to improve your mechanics, but it only takes ten seconds to destroy a kid's confidence. Just one "You're pulling your head" should do it. To put it another way, if you are not going to get them to do it "right," you must not tell them they are doing it "wrong."

Conclusion #3: If you cannot devote any effort to mechanics, you must spend your coaching effort on the only thing that is left, the MENTAL aspects.

All of which leads me to my initial statement: youth baseball is 90% mental. There are some things, like sliding or the catcher's throw to second, where many practice repetitions are necessary and effective. There are many other skills, like knowing where to go when the ball is not hit to you, that require both chalk talk and at least a few physical repetitions to learn. These things constitute the 10% of youth baseball that is physical.

In my hardball career, which started around age six and continued until I was 46, there were several times when my hitting took a quantum leap upward. I do not recall my hitting ever improving gradually except when I first started playing at age six. Here are the events that caused my hitting to improve dramatically overnight starting at age ten:

   Decided to stop worrying about striking out
   Got a lighter bat
   Started swinging only at hitters' pitches on the first two strikes
   Went to a fake-bunt-and-slash type swing on third strikes
   Note that each of these is mental. None involve subtle changes in mechanics. I hasten to add that I      tried many subtle changes in my mechanics over the years. They had little or no effect.

Initially as a coach, I learned all the "right" mechanics and taught them to my players. To my amazement, I found that my highly-trained players hit worse than our opponents and probably worse than they did before all my training. Although we did get compliments about how pretty our swings were. Then, in a subsequent season, I tried doing absolutely no drilling of mechanics all season. As I suspected, we did great!

About all I did regarding those three areas was talk. Experienced teachers know that what they do mainly is try to find as many ways as possible to explain something because each individual seems to need a different explanation for the light bulb to go on. I explained in as many ways as I could dream up why it was crucial to only swing at pitches right down the pipe on the first and second strike. I proved to my players that this was correct by charting every pitch thrown in each of our games and going over each at bat for every player with the whole team. After about ten days to two weeks, they were convinced and concentrated on only using their first two strikes to swing at choice pitches. Our team batting average, on-base, slugging etc. jumped up dramatically.

Once, when I was a semi-pro player-coach, I chewed my team out in the team newsletter for not getting walks 25% of the time like our best player in that department. (My walk percentage was 22% at the time.) Our team had a dramatic upswing in our walks percentage instantly, starting with the very next game.

If you think back over your own playing career, I'll bet you will find that your own progress in hitting came not as a gradual upward slope, but rather in distinct steps like a stairway. Furthermore, those steps stemmed from mental breakthrough insights or large changes in your approach. This happens to Major Leaguers when they break out of slumps. Mark McGwire says he broke out of a slump, not gradually, but overnight, because of a piece of good advice yelled at him by a fan in the stadium as he was going into the tunnel to the locker room.

I once invented a training device to teach kids to keep their head down when they swung the bat. I simply took a large, old, batting helmet and attached a steel shelf support to top of the brim with two bolts. When you wore the helmet, the steel rod stuck out about three feet to the front. I would squat down and hold the rod while the kid wearing the helmet hit poly balls off a tee. Kids wanted to turn their head, but the helmet would not let them. They were quite uncomfortable at first, but they quickly got used to the fact that they could not pull their head.

So none of my Little Leaguers ever pulled their heads again after I invented this, right? No, they kept pulling their heads in games. The device worked, but slowly. I simply did not have time to let them take the necessary thousands of swings with the device on their head. If I were a year-round batting instructor who got the same kids for hundreds of hours, I would use the device.

So if you want to optimize your players' performance in hitting, pitching, and fielding grounders, focus almost entirely on the mental aspects of those skills. Teach, encourage, persuade, cajole, coax, remind. That goes 180 degrees against the traditional belief---that you learn by doing, not by talking. But this is baseball, the world's weirdest sport. Furthermore, in youth baseball, you only have time for the mental approach in the three areas of hitting, pitching/throwing, and fielding grounders.

I highly recommend that youth baseball coaches read two books: The Mental Game of Baseball by H. A. Dorfman and Karl Kuehl and The Mental ABC's of Pitching by H.A. Dorfman. Also, most good baseball books devote a chapter or much space within other chapters to the mental aspects of the game. As far as hitting, pitching/throwing, and fielding grounders are concerned, the mental game should be the main focus of youth coaches who are trying to learn how to coach their teams better.

Good luck,

John T. Reed

Source: http://www.johntreed.com/mental.html

Our Biggest Mistake: Talent Selection Instead of Talent Identification

Many youth sports coaches claim to be great talent identifiers, and point to the results of their 11 year all star team as proof. Yet they are not talent identifiers. They are talent selectors. The difference could not be more striking, or more damaging to our country’s future talent pool in many sports.

Talent selection is the culling of players with the current ability to participate and be successful in events taking place in the near future. Talent identification, on the other hand, is the prediction of future performance based upon an evaluation of current physical, technical, tactical and psychological qualities. Talent selection is pretty simple; talent identification is an art. One yields great results today; the other builds elite athletes and winning teams for the future.

Our current win at all costs youth sports culture promotes talent selection. When a coach is pressured to win by parents or a club, or when he or she feels the need to win to serve their own ego, that coach becomes a talent selector. When you are focused on talent selection, you are picking athletes to help you win now, and cutting ones that will not. You are looking at current athleticism, technical ability, and traits to help achieve short term success. You naturally select the biggest, strongest and fastest young athletes, and play them extensive minutes. You limit playing time for the kids who are not up to snuff, and tell them they need to work harder, get tougher, etc., if they want to play more. You yell at them because they cannot get to the ball quick enough, or cannot shoot well enough to score. You tell them that this type of pressure is what they will face when they are older, so they better get used to it now.

Then, according to the latest statistics, 70% of them quit organized sports by the age of 13!

On the other hand, talent identifiers are searching for young players who may not be elite athletes yet, but possess the physical and psychological attributes to eventually become one. Perhaps they have not yet grown, or been exposed to high level coaching. Perhaps they are not as skillful yet, but show a high level of coachability, sensitivity to training, and the motivation to learn. Identifying talent requires the skill to weigh all the physical, physiological, psychological, and technical components of an athlete, as well as a measure of “gut instinct” of which kid has what it takes to become elite, and which kid does not.

Talent identification also takes a long term approach to player selection and development, and focuses on training large numbers of players, instead of cutting all but the elite ones. It recognizes that many factors affect whether a kid will make it or not, but rarely are childhood results the main factor.

In a fascinating study on junior tennis players from 1994 through 2002, Piotr Unierzyski evaluated 1000 players age 12-13 in 50 different countries, a pool that included future stars Roger Federer, Kim Clisters, and others. His study found that of all these players, the ones who eventually made it into the 

Top 100 Professional Rakings were:

• 3-4 months younger than the mean age for their group
• Slimmer and less powerful than their age group
• Usually faster and more agile than average
• They played less than the average number of matches that the top players did
• Their average practice hours per week were 2-4 hours less than the elite players in their age group
• Their parents were supportive, but not overly involved

Let’s extrapolate this data onto the current elite youth athlete in the United States. Does a player who is young for his or her age, thinner and weaker, practices and plays less than their peers, and has parents who are not overly involved sound like today’s  U11 All Star? Not that I have seen. Now, I know that is quite an over simplification, but do you get my point here?

American youth sports are far too often focused on talent selection, and not talent identification. We are committed to winning now, to getting on ESPN, or achieving some hypothetical pre-pubescent national ranking. Yes, some team sport clubs have B and C teams and develop large numbers of players. Others have those same B and C teams, and players are often jettisoned there with less experienced coaches, less committed teammates, and an overall lesser experience. We say we are developing them for the future, but all too often we are using them to balance the budget. We select the current talent that will help us win now, because if we do not, the club down the road will grab them and win, and our best players will leave. We are not identifying and developing the kids who are most likely to become elite competitors after puberty. We are selecting the ones who already are elite, but often do not have the characteristics needed for long term elite performance.

This is why the emphasis on winning prior to high school is destroying youth sports. This is why nations with 1/100th of our population can compete with us on a world stage in many sports. They actually identify and develop future talent, instead of selection based upon current results. Our wealth and sheer numbers allow us to succeed internationally, but other nations are slowly but surely closing the gap in nearly every sport because quite frankly, they identify and develop talent far better than we do.

How do we fix this? Here are a few simple thoughts for youth sports that to be honest, should not be that hard to implement:

Stop cutting players at young ages, and develop large numbers of players instead of just the elite ones. I recently read that Sweden, for example, produces more NHL players per capita than any other country, and they do not cut players till age 17. Hmmm.

Focus on developing all players at the youngest ages, with particular attention given to helping the less skilled ones catch up technically to the stronger ones. Thus, when they finish their growth spurt, we have a much larger pool of adequately skilled individuals to choose from, instead of just the kids who happened to have facial hair at 12 but stopped growing at 13.


Put an end to the win at all costs nature of pre-pubescent sports, especially things like state and national championships prior to middle or high school, and televising events like the Little League World Series (which has run since 1946 and produced a whopping 27 Major League Players in that time). Ok, admittedly, this one might be tough to implement!

Better educate our coaches to understand the difference between selecting and identifying talent, and then teach and encourage them to develop it rather than try and win with it immediately.

This is just a start, but unless we start making some drastic changes to our youth sports system, we will see smaller nations continuing to close the gap, and eventually surpass the United States in many sports. We are not elite in soccer yet because of the culture. We are falling behind in baseball because of it. Even in basketball, the gap has been significantly reduced. Why? Because our competitors are not relying on a player development system that is often based upon a large population and dumb luck.

The best part about making all these changes? Our clubs and schools will have larger numbers of skilled athletes to choose from, as well as additional healthier and well rounded kids. We will have families who are less stressed both financially and anxiety wise, because their kids can just be kids again, and they don’t feel pressured to have their 10 year olds travel 2000 miles to play a game. We will allow coaches to actually coach, and develop both better people and better athletes.

Abundant skilled players? Lower costs? Less time devoted to youth sports and more to family and school? More success for our national teams and elite individual athletes?

These are changes worth making.

Source: http://changingthegameproject.com/our-biggest-mistake-talent-selection-instead-of-talent-identification/

The Benefits of Video Games

In addition to understanding the many real concerns that today’s parents have with video games, it’s also worth considering the benefits and positive aspects that contemporary interactive entertainment choices provide.

Certainly, many popular titles today are M-rated and intended for discerning adults, given the average age of today’s gaming audience. But the vast majority of games can be played by a broad range of ages and still manage to be fun and engaging without resorting to foul language or violence.

“Games can definitely be good for the family,” says the ESRB’s Patricia Vance. “There’s plenty of selection. Oftentimes I think parents feel that they’re not because video games in the media are portrayed as violent, and hardcore games tend to get the lion’s share of publicity. But parents also need to be comforted knowing that E for Everyone is by far largest category [of software]. Nearly 60 percent of the almost 1,700 ratings we assigned last year were E for Everyone, which means there’s a huge selection of games available that are appropriate for all ages.”

In fact, most video games do have quite a few redeeming qualities – even those with violent content.

All games can and do have benefits for players, and in a number of different and sometimes surprising ways.

Educational Benefits for Students

A recent study from the Education Development Center and the U.S. Congress-supported Ready To Learn (RTL) Initiative found that a curriculum that involved digital media such as video games could improve early literacy skills when coupled with strong parental and teacher involvement. Interestingly, the study focused on young children, and 4- and 5-year-olds who participated showed increases in letter recognition, sounds association with letters, and understanding basic concepts about stories and print.

The key for this study was having high-quality educational titles, along with parents and teachers who were equally invested in the subject matter. That way kids could discuss and examine the concepts that they were exposed to in the games. Also interesting is the value that video games are proven to have even for very young players. A study by the Education Department Center further found that low-income children are “better prepared for success in kindergarten when their preschool teachers incorporate educational video and games from the Ready to Learn Initiative.”

Older children such as teens and tweens can benefit from gameplay as well. Even traditional games teach kids basic everyday skills, according to Ian Bogost, associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and founder of software maker Persuasive Games. “Look at ‘World of Warcraft’: You’ve got 11-year-olds who are learning to delegate responsibility, promote teamwork and steer groups of people toward a common goal.”

Games that are designed to help teach are having an impact on college-age pupils as well. Following a recent 3D virtual simulation of a US/Canadian border crossing, wherein students assumed the role of guards, Loyalist College in Ontario reported that the number of successful test scores increased from 56 percent to 95 percent.

Educational Benefits for Adults
Surprise: Adults can learn something and benefit from video games, too.
As mentioned earlier, research underway by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) indicates that video games can help adults process information much faster and improve their fundamental abilities to reason and solve problems in novel contexts. In fact, results from the ONR study show that video game players perform 10 percent to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than non-game players.

As Dr. Ezriel Kornel explains on WebMD.com, playing certain video games (e.g. Brain Age or Guitar Hero) can also improve hand-eye coordination, enhance split-second decision making and even, potentially, boost auditory perception. Just playing isn’t enough, though, says Dr. Kornel. The key is that you have to be improving each time you play, because in order to improve you have to be learning.

“Anytime the brain is in learning mode,” Kornel says, “there are new synapses forming between the neurons. So you’re creating thousands of connections that can then be applied to other tasks as well.”
Someday, a video game might even save your life, as games are already benefiting students and practitioners in the medical field too.

A study published in the February edition of Archives of Surgery says that surgeons who regularly play video games are generally more skilled at performing laparoscopic surgery.

In addition, according to Dr. Jeffrey Taekman, the director of Duke University’s Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center, “serious games and virtual environments are the future of education.”

Besides offering medical students the ability to practice on patients (which is much safer in the digital world), simulations offer health care providers several upsides. Chief among them, Taekman says, are the abilities to make choices, see results and apply information immediately.

Beyond allowing for greater scalability and group collaboration than traditional classrooms, every decision made in a virtual world, he continues, can be tracked and benchmarked against best practices, then standardized or archived for others’ review. “The traditional textbook will soon become passé,” he suggests. “Gaming platforms will offer an interactive way for students to learn and apply information in context.”

Improved Multitasking
Other carefully-designed studies have also shown that action video games can improve several aspects of brain activity, including multitasking. According to studies by Daphne Bavelier, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, video gamers show real-world improvements on tests of attention, accuracy, vision and multitasking after playing certain titles.

“If you think about it, the attentional and working memory demands of video games can be much greater than other tasks,” says Michael Stroud, a professor of psychology at Merrimack College. “Consider Pac-Man as an example. In Pac-Man, you must navigate your character through a spatial layout while monitoring the separate paths of four additional objects (the ghosts), while keeping the overall goal of clearing the small pellets in memory, as well as keeping track of the remaining large pellets.”

“Think about how this may apply to skills such as driving,” he continues. “When you drive your car, you are faced with a constantly changing environment in the road, not to mention several other distractions that compete for attention that reside in the car. At the same time, you are attempting to navigate through the environment to reach a goal.”

Social Benefits
Games with broad appeal that are easy to grasp can additionally help many families play together, and better bridge the gap between generations. Consider a title like hip-wiggling simulation Just Dance, which can have young kids dancing alongside their grandparents.

There are also many games that have positive social messages that encourage families to be a force for good. In a series of experiments published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found that participants who had just played a “pro-social” game in which characters must work together to help each other out as compared to those who had just played a “neutral” game (e.g. Tetris) were more likely to engage in helpful behaviors. Examples included assisting in a situation involving an abusive boyfriend, picking up a box of pencils or even volunteering to participate in more research.

So-called “serious games,” specifically designed to teach and inform, are also having an impact on the world. Titles like the United Nations’ Food Force teach kids about real-life issues, humanitarianism and the practical challenges facing governments and private organizations today. In the game, children must complete six different missions that reflect the real-life obstacles faced by the World Food Programme in its emergency responses. Other games, like Nourish Interactive’s online Chef Solus and the Food Pyramid Adventure, teach kids about the benefits of healthy eating habits, while still more highlight pressing geopolitical and social issues, e.g. the Global Conflicts series.

Upsides can even extend into the physical world. Consider Facebook game Ecotopia. In summer 2011, players of the popular social game met a challenge from its creators and planted 25,000 trees in the game world in 25 days, leading the game’s developer to plant 25,000 trees in real life.

Encouraging Cooperation and Teamwork
Many games today also emphasize the cooperative aspects of game play, in which two or more players need to work together in order to reach a common goal. For instance, games like Lego Star Wars or Kirby’s Epic Yarn are enhanced by having players cooperate to solve in-game puzzles.
Massively multiplayer games such as LEGO Universe and Lord of the Rings Online further offer added depth, atmosphere and enjoyment by allowing players to band together and work as a team in order to complete certain quests or defeat especially tricky opponents. Game industry analysts such as DFC Intelligence actually predict that video game revenue will reach nearly $70 billion by 2015, thanks in large part to these online, cooperative, subscription-based games that can be played together. Small wonder top titles like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Titan (the next MMO from Blizzard, the company that created World of Warcraft) continue to resonate so strongly with millions worldwide.

Even the way that games are made can encourage teamwork. At Washburn University in Kansas, students study the game development process as a way to build teamwork and collaborative skills.
“It taught me to work in a group,” said Washburn student Adam Bideau of the program in a recent interview with the Washburn Review. “Video games are not created by just one person and they require you to work well with others. You have to pool everyone’s talents together in order to produce the required product.”

Building Confidence
Researchers from McGill University’s Department of Psychology have created and tested computer games that are specifically designed to help people enhance their self-acceptance. The researchers drew on their experience playing repetitive computer games and devised novel counterparts that would help people feel more positive about themselves.

Even games that aren’t specifically designed to do so can still help kids feel a sense of achievement, based simply on the basic principles involved in what makes a good game. Through puzzles, exploration and discovery, players learn to succeed in ways that some researchers say our brains actually prefer. Most games are designed to introduce a concept, such as jumping, and then provide players with an opportunity to master it. Players are then free to explore and utilize and achieve success with this new skill, growing in self-confidence all the while.

Promoting Exercise
All parents know that kids need a healthy combination of physical and mental exercise. Happily, today’s motion-controlled games for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Kinect, Nintendo’s Wii and Wii U, and Sony’s PlayStation Move help kids get both kinds of workouts at the same time.

Better yet, people of all ages are finding them a more approachable way to stay physically fit. While many shy away from exercise because they see it as an activity that isn’t enjoyable, organizations like the American Heart Association now cite, and even recommend, video games as a fun and entertaining way to enjoy physical activity.

Upsides of active play are considerable too. A study reported in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine of 39 Boston middle-school children who played with six different interactive gaming systems found that the games “compared favorably with walking on a treadmill at three miles per hour, with four out of the six activities resulting in higher energy expenditure.”

Organizations supporting individuals of all ages and interests are additionally using active games to help get people up and moving. Nursing homes, cruise ships and even after-school programs all now employ active video games in some form to help stimulate both the mind and body.

Group and Social Play
Video games can also have some very important effects on family relationships, and deserve to be thought of as something that can – and should – be played together.

It’s always seemed obvious to families that activities like playing board games, make-believe, or even making music together could strengthen the family bond. But many parents view video games as a solitary, sedentary, time-wasting activity, when the truth is that video games have in fact emerged as a viable option for family game time that can potentially offer great benefits to families who are willing to enjoy them together. You won’t be alone if you do decide to take the plunge either. According to the ESA, 45 percent of parents play computer and video games with their children at least weekly, an increase from 36 percent in 2007.

Families that embrace playing video games as part of their everyday life are likely to find themselves enjoying a greater sense of cohesion and communication than families who still view video games as an idle, meaningless and solitary pursuit. As a result, it’s small wonder that so many in this day and age are putting away the cards and dice and turning to high-tech alternatives for modern family game nights.

Moving, thinking, cooperating, helping, learning, empathizing, growing, seeing the world from other perspectives… video games can help kids and families do all these things and more. So talk to your friends, do the research and seek out games that your family likes to play and that you as parents are comfortable with, then consider making play a part of your regular routine. Chances are, you won’t just have a great time – you’ll also make lasting memories and connections with your kids while doing so.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2011/12/the-benefits-of-video-games/

Moneyball Jr.: Baseball for minors looks a lot like the Majors

The nation's newest elite baseball players are courted like free agents, flown cross-country for big games and featured on TV.Bidding wars break out over the most coveted stars, who resemble Major Leaguers in many ways.

Except for their age.

At the highest levels of 8- to 14-year-old travelbaseball, schoolboy superstars are plied with privileges and showcased at pricey events while less-gifted players and their families try to keep pace by spending a fortune — as much as $24,000 annually — on tournaments, equipment and lessons.

Big League dreams, ambitious coaches and massive tournament profitshave fueled a youth sports phenomenon that bears little resemblance to the local Little League.

This big-money version of the youth game is thriving in South Florida, home to hundreds of travelteams.

"Kids 9 years old ... are professional athletes right now, because this stuff is so unregulated," said Ron Filipkowski, a former federal and state prosecutor in Sarasota who was a travel ball father, coach and director. "Travel ball at the elite level is the Wild, Wild West of sports. There are no rules, no laws."

WATCH VIDEO: Travel ball isn't little league

Scant regulation combined with an endless stream of money-making tournaments have created a high-pressure world of non-stop, year-round baseball, where youngsters driven by coaches, tournament organizers or their parents may play in more games than some adult pros. Some will end up on operating tables before they are out of high school, or get burned out and quit, medical experts and others told the Sun Sentinel.

"Some parents feel if they miss a tournament, their [child] is falling behind," said Alex Fernandez, a former Florida Marlins pitching great who coaches the Pembroke Lakes Bulldogs 14-and-under travel ball team. "A lot of people live through their kids. That's where the trouble comes."

Advocates counter that travel ball instills expert skills in America's pastime at a younger age than ever before, and offers children and their families extraordinary competitive opportunities — such as at a mid-February tournament at Pembroke Shores Park in Broward County.

The four-day event drew top-ranked teams from California, Texas and Florida — and aired to a national audience on ESPN3.

"Travel ball is as close as you can get to real Major League Baseball," said Anthony Russo, coach of the Lantana-based South Florida Stealth. "By 12 years old, we know everyone who is [any]one."

1st Inning: Bidding Wars

After a victory by Pembroke Pines-based Team MVP in last month's tournament, the head coach of the travel team of 12-year-old boys strolled out to the diamond to embrace his pitcher. Mike Sagaro wrapped his arms around Eric Volpi, burying his face in the chest of the 6-foot-3, 185-pound hurler from New York.

Volpi, a seventh-grader, towered over his much-shorter teammates as they celebrated the 8-5 defeat of one of Volpi's former teams: the Stealth, a powerhouse for which Volpi played just months before. Earlier that weekend, Volpi helped defeat yet another of his former squads, a team from California.

"Now," one of Team MVP's coaches announced triumphantly into a microphone at the start of the tournament, Volpi "plays for us."

So it goes in travel baseball. Like in pro sports, today's teammate may be tomorrow's opponent.

WATCH VIDEO: The cost of travel baseball

Showing a flair for acquiring talent that would do a Major League owner proud, Sagaro this winter not only attracted the hard-throwing Volpi, who after the tournament flew home to Yorktown Heights, N.Y., he also secured the services of another highly regarded 12-year-old: Luke Gutos, of Moorestown, N.J., who stands 5-9 and weighs 140 pounds, and refines his swing in an $8,000 batting cage in his backyard.

In landing the two boys, Sagaro successfully parried a challenge from Russo, the Stealth coach. Both had played for Russo last fall, and Russo was willing to provide expenses-paid travel to return for tournaments in Florida and elsewhere.

Russo, a Weston-based trial attorney, joked that he was still "bitter" about losing out in the sweepstakes for the two stars. But he said he got a measure of revenge weeks later by stealing Antonio Roca, a Jacksonville-based pitcher who has played for 12 different travel ball organizations since 2009, from Team MVP's 11-and-under roster.

John Volpi said his son, who also played for the San Diego Stars and Oakley, Calif., Stingrays at age 10 and 11, agonized for a week over whether to commit to the Broward-based Team MVP or the Palm Beach County-based Stealth. Volpi and his friend Gutos ultimately chose Team MVP for one primary reason: its No. 1 national ranking in its age group.

"I'm amazed and astounded, really," said the older Volpi, "at what goes on in this travel ball."

2nd Inning: 'Cutthroat Baseball'

One of the first stars routinely flown around the country by travelbaseball teams was Bryce Harper, the first overall pick in the 2011 Major League draft, and now an All-Star outfielder for the WashingtonNationals. As a youngster, Harper played for travel ball teams from California, Arizona, Oklahoma and Nevada.

"I'd have someone call me a couple of times a week," Bryce's father, Ron Harper, told the Sun Sentinel from his home in Las Vegas. "Teams from Texas, Washington, New York, you name it."

Beginning when his son was 9, Harper said, he accepted reimbursements from teams for flights, hotels and rental carsthat allowed him and his son to travel about three weekends a month, playing in as many as 130 games a year. Major League Baseball's regular season is 162 games.

PHOTO GALLERY: Elite young baseball players in South Florida travel ball

"I would put Bryce in the best situation I possibly could," his father said. "Heck, what 9-year-old gets to travel all over?"

Nowadays, plenty. Unlike the rival Little League, travel ball's sanctioning bodies permit teams — which may be funded by wealthy business people, dues payments from parents, or donations from sponsors — to import players from any locale. The result: many youth travel ball teams are run like mini-Major League franchises by coaches who call themselves "owners."

It's not difficult to tell when the superstar free agents arrive for the annual end-of-summer championships at Disney World organized by the United States Specialty Sports Association, a travel sports giant.

"The taxis are rolling up," said George Gonzalez, the association's vice president of international baseball. The young players "will come in, pitch a game, get back in the taxi and fly back to wherever [teams] recruited them from. It is serious baseball."

One 12-and-under team from Moreno, Calif., won a major travel ball title last summer by bringing in a half-dozen boys from Florida, including a youngster from Bartow who has played for 27 USSSA teams from 19 organizations since 2010, according to the association's website.

"People cry about it," said the founder of the Houston Banditos Baseball Club, Ray DeLeon. "But ... if you want to play at the national level, you gotta recruit. If we see a player we like, if he's not on a better team, we try to take him. That's what we do here. It's cutthroat baseball."

Filipkowski said one father told him he negotiated spending money — about $500 for a weekend — before agreeing to fly with his son to a tournament. But though rumors abound of players or family members being paid outright, parents and officials from teams interviewed for this story told the Sun Sentinel they had never engaged in it.

Athletes can lose their collegiate eligibility if they accept money beyond reimbursement for travel, lodging and other costs directly related to competitions. Yet even teams that technically abide by National Collegiate Athletic Association rules may stretch them in spirit, some say.

"Teams are outbidding people on the field and off the field with balls, bats, equipment, [sun]glasses and sneakers to go to schoolin," said George Fernandez, a coach for the Miami Prospects 11-and-under team. "All the teams are doing it."

Players also are prohibited by the NCAA from accepting "excessive" awards. That restriction, however, doesn't apply to the grown-ups.

DeLeon, the Banditos' owner, flashed a chunky, stone-encrusted ring before a game at the Pembroke Pines tournament. He said team funds paid for the showpiece after his 12-and-under boys captured a second straight national youth baseball championship in Memphis, Tenn., last summer.

He told a reporter it cost $24,000.

3rd Inning: The Association

A not-for-profit organization lured to Kissimmee 10 years ago from Petersburg, Va., the USSSA has been enormously profitable to those running it.

The association's revenues come from organizing tournaments and levying registration fees on teams and players. It is now the dominant force in travel sports in the 8- to-14-year-old age bracket nationwide.

Its chief executive, Don DeDonatis, was paid $729,600 in 2011, and seven other executives, including DeDonatis' son and son-in-law, took home more than $116,000 each, according to tax records.

Board members who served part-time received from $51,000 to $90,000 in 2011, the records show — "a very unusual practice" in the not-for-profit world where volunteer boards are customary, according to Linda Lampkin, a research director for a Washington-based company that tracks executive compensation and other salary data.

In an interview with the Sun Sentinel, DeDonatis said he works around the clock, seven days a week. He said the association has rewarded those who helped it evolve from a small-market, softball-only sanctioning body in the 1980s to the power in youth baseball, basketball, taekwondo and eight other sports that it is now.

"We've taken care of our board, our people who have been in this for 35 years, and who sacrificed when we didn't have anything," DeDonatis said. "It's a business, at the bottom line, at the end of the day."

WATCH VIDEO: Interview with CEO of USSSA

Top executives at other U.S. nonprofits in sports or recreation with about the same revenue — the USSSA reported about $9 million in 2010 and 2011 — earned an average of $194,000 in 2010, according to a computeranalysis from Lampkin's firm, the ERI Economic Research Institute. Little League Baseball, which reported $22.7 million in revenue, paid its president/chief executive, Stephen D. Keener, $396,603 in 2010, tax records show.

The USSSA has used its proximity to Disney World to helpdrive its growth. The walls of its $4 million headquarters in Kissimmee are covered with framed jerseys, autographed photos and wooden bats. Executives can stroll out to a terrace that overlooks right field in the Houston Astros spring training complex to catch a few innings of whatever game is taking place.

The organization has seen a 700 percent increase in the number of its baseball teams at all ages in the southern half of Florida (including the Orlando area) since 2001, with 2,747 teams at present, according to USSSA data.

Officials want much, much more. Several told the Sun Sentinel they are pursuing a multi-year television deal they hope will push the USSSA past the larger, older, more legendary — but less competition-minded — Little League.

"At our top level, we don't really limit anything," said Don DeDonatis III, DeDonatis' son and the USSSA's vice president of baseball operations — though the association does have rules that bar last-minute player-swapping during major tournaments.

"We're looking for the top teams, however they are formed, to all come to one place and play," the younger DeDonatis said. "That's why we are going to get this on ESPN … You put our 12 elites versus the Little League [best players], and it's not even close."

4th Inning: The Parents

It is parents, ultimately, who have paid for and brought about the transformation of youth baseball. At weekend tournaments, moms and dads plant fold-out chairs and coolers behind the dugouts and sit all day long, watching two to four games, staring at the field through sunglasses and occasionally erupting in shouts. Many do it cheerfully, but others bring more competitiveness, ripping into umpires or questioning coaches about why their sons didn't play more or bat higher in the lineup.

One 12-year-old player punched an opponent at the behest of his mother,who was later banned from games, according to David Dominguez, who has coached travel ball teams in Miramar and directed USSSA tournaments in Broward County.

"I wish I could blame it on liquor," Dominguez said. "I can't. ... A lot of times it's just dads or moms that are overly competitive."

According to one former coach, it's not unheard of for families to offer cash to coaches to put their sons in the lineup.

Some South Florida parents say they are disconcerted by travel ball's excesses — the expense, year-round commitment and obsession with winning — yet believe there is no real alternative if their children intend to play baseball in high schooland beyond.

"Your whole lives revolve around this," said Tobin Cultrera, of Boynton Beach, whose sons, 9 and 11, play for the Lake Worth-based Florida Piranaz. "There are plenty of guys out there spending $2,000 a month. I hope I'm not — I don't want to look."

Others seem uncertain of the wisdom of putting young children in programs where they may play nearly as many games annually as Major Leaguers.

Gino Pitelli, who has two sons on the 12-and-under Team Miami, said, "I want to see, 20 years from now, how many of these kids are still playing ... Or are they going to be so burnt out that it's not going to happen? ... Are their arms going to be falling off? Will they have back problems?"

"I played a ton of baseball" as a boy, said Fernandez, the former Marlin pitching great whose 14-year-old son now plays travel ball. "It's nothing compared to now."

5th Inning: Injuries

One recent Monday, five youth baseball players showed up at the Pensacola office of Dr. James R. Andrews, an orthopedic surgeon known for his work with professional athletes. All had just sustained injuries, Andrews told the Sun Sentinel, and all would need Tommy John elbow surgery, a reconstructive procedure named after the former Major League pitcher.

Andrews said the No. 1 risk factor for Tommy John surgery among children is year-round baseball, which is standard for Florida travel teams. The American Sports Medicine Institute, which Andrews founded and whose mission includes preventing sports-related injuries, recommends that kids don't even pick up a baseball for three or four months a year.

The USSSA does have rules for its teams designed to protect the healthof pitchers. Its bylaws limit innings pitched, prohibiting kids 7 to 12, for example, from pitching more than six innings in one day or taking the mound the day after pitching more than three innings.

However, the sports medicine institute recommends imposing limits on numbers of pitches — not just on the innings pitched. The Little League, which unlike travel ball, limits its season to a few months annually, restricts its 11- and 12-year-old pitchers to no more than 85 pitches daily.

Jerry Frey, who runs a cleaning service in Clearwater, coached both of his sons through years of travel ball. Chris, the younger, emerged as a schoolboy star at age 11. But his hopes of being drafted by a Major League team ended when he fractured a bone in his pitching arm as a senior in high school.He's trying to come back this spring, his father said, hoping to sign with the Detroit Tigers' organization as a free agent.

James, Frey's elder son, now 26, won a baseball scholarship to the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, but left to attend culinary schoolafter he blew out his arm and required Tommy John surgery.

Jerry Frey doesn't blame either injury on too much baseball. Things happen, he said.

"A lot of [their peers] signed big contracts," Frey said. "It's amazing. You see great stories. Of course, you see real sad stories, too."

6th Inning: The 'Owners'

Team MVP's Sagaro and the Stealth's Russo epitomize a new breed of youth baseball impresario, men who possess great ambition as well as resources.Both men, who have done well in their business careers, say they don't make a penny from their teams, but spend plenty — simply because they can. Their generosity extends far and wide, but primarily to supremely talented boys.

"While [Sagaro] provides, he also expects," said Armando Sierra, one of Team MVP's coaches. "We play an awful lot of games ... It's very competitive."

Most boys selected for Sagaro's crown jewel — the 12-and-under team that includes his son Michael — will play over 100 games annually, traveling to tournaments around the state and nation, including Puerto Rico. They receive eight different uniforms that include jerseys with players' names stitched on the back in two colors.

"We've made the organization a special place for the gifted child in South Florida to show his talent and improve his talent," Sagaro said.

His teams have also boasted stars from Puerto Rico (Yanluis Ortiz Torres), New York (Volpi) and New Jersey (Gutos), as well as Jacksonville and Orlando..

Sagaro acknowledged he's given jobs to the fathers of a few of his players, but said those arrangements haven't been tied to their sons' performance or participation on his teams. The father of one current player he lured from a team in Miami Lakes, he said, works as a courier at his Coral Gables real estate company.

Because his program has achieved success at the national level in recent years, Sagaro said, he rarely needs to seek talent. Parents driven to ensure their children's success will bring their kids to him.

"There are a lot of sick fathers who will fly [their kids] in from wherever to wear our uniform," Sagaro said. "If I'm going to pay [travel expenses]for a kid, he's going to be a superstar."

Russo said anybody talented enough to make one of his rosters — he runs separate teams for boys age 9, 11 and 12 — gets a free ride. He bears virtually all major costs. He estimates he spends more than $100,000 annually — about $10,000 per player — just on his 12-and-under squad, including hotel and other travel costs, salaries for a general manager and coaching staff, and the tab for a half-dozen uniforms per player.

For a major tournament, Russo said, he might drop $10,000 in a few days.

To make sure his team doesn't end up losing at such events, he said, he will fly in a few "guest players" as "insurance" to bolster the roster.

Why do it? Sagaro and Russo, who also has a son on one of his teams, say they love baseball and children, and have gotten hooked. Both men acknowledge they are resented.

"I've made more enemies in travel baseball than I have in 20 years as a trial attorney," Russo said. "People who don't have the means to do it, they get frustrated."

Some coaches say they aren't frustrated, but disgusted. George Fernandez, whose son once played for Team MVP and Sagaro, said he and the free-spending owner "didn't see eye to eye."

"I don't do the fly-in kids," Fernandez said. "I don't play kids who don't sweat for me every day ... At some point, people lose perspective."

7th Inning: The Prospect

His nutritional program calls for virtually no junk food and four protein shakes daily to put muscle on his 4-11, 90-pound frame.

Boyer, who once played in 183 baseball games in a calendar year, has averaged about 160 since he began playing travel ball at age 6, his father said.

Besides committing to play for Team MVP's 11-and-under team and the Weston Black Hawks 12-and-under squad, Boyer plans to suit up for at least another eight teams in 2013. That includes a squad in Dallas that Boyer's father said offered to fly the pair in and out of Texas on consecutive weekends.

"I hope to grow up and play in Major League Baseball, and get a scholarship," Tommy said before a game with Team MVP at Tamiami Park in Miami. "I love to play."

Tommy's father, Don, who operates a tree service business in St. Cloud, estimates he spends $2,000 a month on baseball.

Boyer said two other teams expressed interest in Tommy's services for this year, but both wanted him to fork over about $600 in fees and more money for a uniform. He said no, telling them: "Tommy gets everything paid for. Why should I pay you almost $1,000 when everybody else is paying for it?"

The Florida man said he constructed a 10-by-10-foot room off of his son's bedroom to hold all the medals and trophies Tommy has won.

"It's not about just having fun.It's not," Don Boyer said. "It's about going out and doing a job ... [Tommy] loves to play with the best and for the best."

8th Inning: The Wild West

Bruce Aven, one of Team MVP's coaches and a former Major League player for four teams, including the Marlins, said he spends more time with MVP's kids than he does with the high schoolers he coaches at American Heritage in Plantation. State high schoolregulations, he noted, restrict how frequently high school athletes can take part in games and practices.

In travel baseball, there are no limits. Teams can train and play as much as they wish, which has created the most skilled generation of young players in history, some contend.

"It's not even close to where it was five or 10 years ago," Aven said. "Travel baseball is growing faster than any sport around."

There is no independent watchdog keeping an eye on that growth.

The USSSA and other travel sport organizations enforce their own rules and regulations, but some say the financial stake they have in keeping a year-round slate of tournaments stocked with teams could take precedence over the welfare of the children playing in them. There is no sovereign oversight body comparable to the Florida High School Athletic Association, which regulates state high school sports and must answer to state legislators.

The FHSAA and NCAA, the governing body for collegesports, either prohibit or strictly regulate a variety of practices common in travel ball such as free agency, player compensation/reimbursements and recruiting — the latter is termed "a gross violation of the spirit and philosophy of educational athletics" by the high school association's rules handbook.

"Every aspect of what [travel ball owners] do would violate all the high school association rules and the NCAA rules," said Filipkowski, who was a USSSA regional director until last year, when he left to devote more time to his law practice. "There is not any question about that. ... The state directors of the [USSSA] have the power and authority to step in and regulate it, but there is no desire to do it."

The reason, the former prosecutor said, is economics.

"That's their business," said Filipkowski. "You're asking them to cut off their own legs."

9th Inning: Big Benefits, No Guarantees

USSSA officials say they have fostered a sports and business model that benefits both the young athletes — by giving them top-notch opportunities for competition and personal growth — and the potentialtelevision partners the association hopes to attract.

Many parents, like Eric Volpi's father, say the travel ball experiencehas been totally positive.

"To have the opportunity to do this at 12 years old, before he's a teenager — it's incredible," John Volpi said. "He's enjoyed every minute of it."

More tangible benefits have flowed to others involved with the USSSA, many people told the Sun Sentinel. The association contracts out its myriad tournaments to directors who can make significant profits. Filipkowski said he took home about $100,000 annually by arranging USSSA tournaments in his designated region on Florida's Gulf coast.

After paying for costsranging from fields to umpires to trophies to baseballs, and sending the required fees to the association, he said, directors are free to keep the balance of revenue collected — teams usually pay between $400 and $600 per tournament to enter.

"The bottom line to all of this: There is a lot of money involved," said Michael Machado, a travelball coach and father from St. Petersburg whose high-school age son played last summer for the Broward-based South Florida Elite. "A lot, lot of money."

Earnings can be even greater in Broward County where, unlike in Palm Beachand Miami-Dade counties, fields are often provided for USSSA tournaments at no cost.

Being given the right to stage the tournaments, Filipkowski said, "is like a license to print money."

There is no similar guarantee for parents paying for travel ball. For families with dreams of seeing their boy someday in Yankee pinstripes or Dodger blue, or getting a free ride to college, the odds are very, very long. About 12.5 million American kids play baseball, according to an estimate from a national sporting-goods manufacturers association. On Opening Day next month, there will room for 750 players on Major League rosters.

As for scholarships,the NCAA allows only 11.7 for baseball per Division I school, and they often get divvied up among rosters of two dozen players or more.

"About 80 percent of parents paying for this will get nothing out of it," Machado said.

"It's a gamble: ... Is my son better than your son? I hope so."

Source: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-03-16/news/fl-moneyball-jr-20130317_1_bidding-wars-travel-ball-team-south-florida-stealth

Youth Baseball: Little League vs Select/Travel

August is Little League World Series time so I thought that I would do some reading about the great worldwide event.

As such, I stumbled upon the Bleacher Report post entitled Little League World Series 2010: Top 30 Little Leaguers Turned MLB Stars. I have to tell you that I found the list surprising and thought provoking. The list spans players debuting in 1959 to present day players. Check out the list of the Top 30 MLB players who played in the Little League World Series over the last 50 years and tell me if you are not surprise by how short and unimpressive the list is. I have watched and marveled at the talented players competing in Williamsport for years so surely the list of players reaching the MLB has be more expansive and impressive than this list. I did some checking and found a similar list on Wikipedia Little League Post.

Here is the list compiled by Bleacher Report - Name (MLB debut year)

30. Chin-Feng Chen (2002)
29. Jim Barbieri (1960)
28. Keith Lampard (1969)
27. Bill Connors (1967)
26. Adam Loewen (2006)
25. Guillermo Quiroz (1998)
24. Marc Pisciotta (1997)
23. Jim Pankovits (1984)
22. Hector Torres (1968)
21. Bobby Mitchell (1970)
20. Yusmeiro Petit (2006)
19. Carl Taylor (1964)
18. Sean Burroughs (2002)
17. Larvell Blanks (1980)
16. Lloyd McClendon (1987)
15. Lastings Milledge (2005)
14. Ken Hubbs (1962 NL Rookie of the Year, died in air traffic accident.)
13. Ed Vosberg (1992)
12. Charlie Hayes (1983)
11. Dave Veres (1994)
10. Wilson Alvarez (1994)
09. Dan Wilson (1993)
08. Jason Marquis (1996)
07. Derek Bell (1991)
06. Jason Bay (2003)
05. Jason Varitek (1997)
04. Rick Wise (1964)
03. Carney Lansford (1977)
02. Boog Powell (1959)
01. Gary Sheffield (1988)

I think I know why this list is so unimpressive. Pure and simple, the best players do not play Little League Baseball, they play select or travel ball instead. Generally speaking, here are the reasons why Little League players are not as strong as their select counterparts.


Select players typically get better coaching / training

In our city the best players shun Little League and opt to play on highly developed select ball teams where the instruction level is typically superior and often year round. Little Leaguers are often coached by dads. While dads are involved in select ball too, kids are also being instructed by former major league, minor league and / or college players. My son's current team has a former Mets minor league catcher and a former Big Ten Michigan player as trainers. The team also has a direct connection to one of the best High School baseball programs in the state. Through this association, the team gets some instruction from the HS coaches and use of top notch facilities for winter training. Little Leaguers do not typically train year round.


Select players get more playing experience

The typical Little League schedule has anywhere from 18 to 30 games which includes an end of season tournament. (Keep in mind that the Little League World Series is made up of All Stars from the entire league and is played by a select few after the regular season at age 12). 12 year old select players typically play in 50-80 games. I have also noticed that select teams carry less players on their rosters compared to Little League teams. This of course means that each select player will get more innings and at bats compared to a Little Leaguer.


Select players are playing against better competition

As the name suggests, select ball is made up of a selection of the best players in the region. Little League has an open registration and team are often randomly selected. Little League gets some really talented players as we have seen on ESPN, but during the regular season they are playing with and against developmental players. Select players are always competing against the best players in the region and often travel far and wide to play in top talent tournaments.


Select players play on bigger fields

Another reason the top players do not play Little League is the size of the fields. 12 year old Little Leaguers look over grown when they play on a field with 60 foot base paths and 46 foot pitching distance. In select, 8U and 9U players play on a field this size. By the age of 12, the age of most Little League World Series participants, select players play on 70 foot base paths and 50' 6" pitching distance. 13 year olds play on 80 foot base paths and 54' pitching and 14 year olds play on MLB size fields. The slow progression in the field size helps the select player prepared for High School Ball. I assume Little League uses the smaller fields for the developmental players that are on every team. I would imagine that many Little League players jumping up from 60 foot to 80 or 90 foot base paths would struggle initially. This struggle may come when they are trying out for a high school team.


Select Players play a more sophisticated game.

Little League does not use High School rules. They use modified rules because many of the kids are developmental. In Little League a batter is automatically out on a dropped third strike and base runners are not allowed to take a lead. In select, stealing and dropped third strikes are played by U9 players who play at the highest level.


This is an important distinction. Select pitchers, from a really young age, are learning pick off moves. Select base runners are learning how to read pitchers moves and steal bases at a young age. Select catchers are learning how to throw out base stealers. It is a much more sophisticated level of play and gives these players a clear advantage whey they move on to high school. I can tell you that the best players have no problem with these advanced rules. I also understand why Little League has these rules. Little league takes all players and randomly assigns players. Some players are very talented for sure, but many are not. The smaller field and the modified rules are make the game easier for the developmental players.
The Main Point


The Little League World Series showcases some great baseball talent for sure, but the evidence is clear that these players are not making it to the pros and the reasons are obvious.

Source: http://www.statsdad.com/2010/08/youth-baseball-little-league-vs-select.html

He's Just A Little Boy

The BEST High School Baseball players in the country- (Part 1)

A day in the Life the best high school baseball players in the country.


BRADY AIKEN | 2014 #1 Overall Draft Pick- Houston Astros

TYLER & STEPHEN KOLEK | 2014 #2 Overall Draft Pick & Texas A&M Commit

KODI MEDEIROS | 2014 Milwaukee Brewers 1st Rd. Draft Pick

JAKSON REETZ | 2014 Washington National 3rd Rd. Draft Pick

NICHOLAS SHUMPERT | Kentucky Baseball Commit & 2015 MLB Draft Top Prospect