What Gets Lost as Little Leagues Get Smaller

[Yappi]

On a windy April Saturday in Hamden, Connecticut, where I live, I watched a blur of kids test their baseball skills, in preparation for the Little League season. My son was among them; I’d volunteered to be a coach this year. On the following Monday evening, I was to join the other coaches to pick the teams.

I’d had one previous experience with the drafting of players. In 2011, while writing a book about the inner life of an N.F.L. team, I’d watched the New York Jets prepare for the draft. That year, Jets scouts traversed the country, observing and meeting college players and talking with coaches, professors, acquaintances, and sometimes law enforcement. They prepared five thousand thick reports on twelve hundred prospects, searching for hidden truths and the secrets of young souls, overvaluing those things that they most valued about themselves, and crossing their fingers.

What Gets Lost as Little Leagues Get Smaller

Town leagues, unprofessionalized and open to all, knit neighborhoods together in ways that intensive and competitive travel teams do not.

www.newyorker.com

 

[Thavoice]

What Gets Lost as Little Leagues Get Smaller

Town leagues, unprofessionalized and open to all, knit neighborhoods together in ways that intensive and competitive travel teams do not.

www.newyorker.com

LL is, or should be, very important to communities to build their baseball programs.
What I have seen, along with dwindling numbers, is so many places starting their games so early in the spring and ending so soon in the summer.

Seen some start in early to mid april and ending mid june. I know locally we still have 8 LL teams, not bad for a D3 sized HS, and dont start until mid to late May for the games and play until July.

Know what I hate? Going by diamonds in late June and seeing the parks empty because they have already concluded the year.
I know...vacations, right?

Um. Go. Go on vacation. The world does not end if a kid misses a game or two of little league, Tball or coach pitch.

It really doesnt. You are not letting your team down. I know we would look to see when our LL tournament would start and make sure ya dont schedule that 2 week period.

The issue at hand with that? So many kids are playing moneyball these days at a young age. Sorry, I mean playing in the fleecing leagues. Wait, I mean, travel ball. They spend so much $$$ on the team and on travel some cannot afford to take another vacation and/or wont miss these so very important travel tournaments because of the $$ spent.