Select Leagues

[The River Assassin]

I admittedly don't much about select leagues for kids, but does anyone else feel like this is a huge scam to get parents of young kids to throw down tons of cash so their kid can play ball. They always say the same exact thing, 'well, he/she is really talented and I don't want him/her to fall behind the other kids, plus he/she really loves it and doesn't want to do anything else.'

First, fall behind who? You really think playing against the 'best' at that age is going make a difference. Those kids have so much more development to go through, I doubt playing in a league is going to make much of a difference.

Second, kids love a lot of things, its a parents job to make sure their kid is properly exposed to different activities so the kid can be well rounded. Just because a kid 'loves' something doesn't mean you have him do it year round. Take some time to try out several different hobbies, if they still go back to sports, then fine, but at least expose them to something different first.

Long rant over

[fischer]

keep us updated?

[The River Assassin]

Oh, are we moving that bit to this thread now? I figured we would keep it on one thread.

[P. Marf]

I think it is somewhat of a scam. I understand it once you reach a certain age that it is beneficial, but it has gone overboard. Now it seems you have to pay a lot to put your kid in a good league. Whatever happened to the good ol Pony and little league? I think I started playing select ball when I was around 10 or 11.

[fischer]

I never once played select baseball.

I ended up being alright on the high school level. In fact, a lot of those select "studs" sat on the bench behind me and a couple other "scrubs" who just played pony league baseball.

Not to mention, between the 4 of us, the non selectors had an all stater, 3 1st team all area players, 3 1st team all district players and 2 of us shattered the previous batting average record. We had the area leader in RBI, the area leader in doubles, and a top 5 er in the area in strikeouts and wins.

Its a scam.

[The River Assassin]

Seems like all of my professors with kids in that age range have kids in select. Is it really that select if that many people are involved in it?

[fischer]

If you have money you can play select

[P. Marf]

I still always played in the rec leagues, but I wanted to play year round an you pretty much have to play select to do that.

[sully]

May 4, 2012 18:16:20 GMT -5 P. Marf said:

Whatever happened to the good ol Pony and little league? I think I started playing select ball when I was around 10 or 11.

Humble brag?