Miles's blog

Playing little league baseball these days requires much more than merely showing up with a hand-me-down glove and a new cap.  Today’s young players, according to an article in the New York Times, require something like $2000 a year in equipment, fees, and expenses.  Bats costs more than $200.  Every year kids need new cleats.  Gloves can easily run more than $100.  If you are strapped for cash then hope your kid is bad and gives it up, unless you want to spend the amount of a small car payment on his participation. (I am going to stereotype this into a boy ballplayer as that is what the article focused on.  I have no idea how much girls softball costs.)

Just letting kids play baseball all day with their friends is out.  For one thing, who wants to leave their kids alone in a park all day?  We trust too little to allow nine-year olds to be unsupervised at any time.  So we program their lives and they conform to a schedule as rigid as the President, in part so we can assure their transportation between school, practice, rehearsal, babysitter, doctor, play dates, etc.  That means little leagues.  And that means games with rules, coaches, uniforms, keeping score, and wins and losses.  (Or maybe one of those leagues where everyone develops self esteem by not keeping score and celebrating after the game whether you won or lost because nobody wins or loses. Yech.)

Instead of kids playing ball all day in the park and getting maybe 100 at bats a day and fielding 200 balls, we now have a bunch of children being coached by some guy whose knowledge of baseball was developed listening to Harry Caray broadcast Cubs games while drunk.  (Yes, I mean both the broadcaster and the listener were drunk.)  Showing up on the first day of little league with no bat, worn P.F. Flyers, and a glove bought at Wal-Mart brands a kid a loser who will never get a real chance to play.  As ballplayers get older the adults get more serious.  This means more games, more expensive equipment, more travel, more private coaching and more pressure.  Parents begin to keep score, and kids create Excel spreadsheets with stats rivaling a Bill James Baseball Abstract.  Umpires and coaches are subject to the scrutiny and disdain we usually reserve for politicians.

I am not sure the kids still have fun. Maybe they do.  I am pretty sure that by the time a boy reaches his teens, he is not still playing baseball just for the fun of it; that unless he has shown some aptitude for the game, he has given it up and found some other interest.  Parents of high school ballplayers cannot help but think of the chances their son has to play in college, maybe even get a scholarship.  The best players are scouted by the major leagues before they can drive.  Baseball America creates lists of the best baseball players in America by age.  Draft projections start for sophomores in high school.

All of this is not necessarily bad.  And I certainly am not condemning the parents who facilitate the current system.  There is not much choice.  I have no doubt that had Meg been my son who was good at baseball as she is at dance I would have been buying $300 Nikes, paying for him to play in tournaments in Puerto Rico, and analyzing his swing with an expensive video system as he hit in the batting cage in my backyard.  (Instead I went with her to buy her first pair of pointe shoes and attended numerous performances watching a bunch of other people’s children and counting the minutes until mine would perform.  By the way, did I tell you my daughter is a professional dancer with one of the finest modern dance companies in the world?)

I do wonder sometimes, though, whether the current system has caused some negative results.  While the cost of raising a big leaguer has risen, the participation of African-Americans has dropped.  Less than 10 percent of current major leaguers are African-American.  I cannot help but wonder whether a lot of that decline is the result the financial demands of our current system.  Undoubtedly some of it is because baseball is just not as cool as football or basketball.  (If you doubt this watch Mike and Mike in the morning and see how often they talk about baseball as opposed to these other two sports.  Not that young African-Americans are watching Mike and Mike, but I do think it reflects the overall media attitude toward baseball.)  In America baseball is the sport of middle-aged white men, mostly baby boomers, and the little leaguers in large part are their sons.  

In the rest of this hemisphere, however, baseball is played much as it was in America 50 and more years ago.  Kids play ball in the street, in the park, in the playground—wherever they can.  Balls often have more tape than cowhide (they stopped using horsehide decades ago) and gloves might be made of cardboard instead of leather.  Boys in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and other countries in Latin America need no $250 bat.  They swing bats salvaged from older players, nailed together.  And like Americans from the olden days, these guys develop the ability to really play.  More than a quarter of current major leaguers are from other countries.

If you have a son who likes playing baseball (Eva Wilson and Mark Randall I am talking to you) I am both happy and sad for you.  I am sure it is a lot of fun to watch them play such a great game.  But I am equally sure that every time you write a check to the local league or buy a ticket for a trip to Florida or use the credit card to purchase Ryan Braun signature batting gloves (testosterone not included) your mind cannot help but wonder if he will repay you with his bonus check upon signing with the Rockies.