Originally Posted by
Commercecomet24
Good question. Travel ball has become more and more about developing players. In the early days a lot of it was just daddys wanting to put a team together so their kid could play SS, Pitch and bat 4th lol, but that's changed over the years. There's a lot of really good coaches in travel ball now(still a few idiots) but it's a whole lot better.
I think thats becoming more and more the case. Heck even at the HS level coaches are becoming more dependent on travel ball for development of their players. Half the kids on the West Jones State Championship team from last year were my players, Hattiesburg high team championship team from the year before had 5 of my kids on it, Oak Grove has a bunch. I did it for 20+ years and won a lot of games and a couple of national titles. When I first started most of the teams in travel were daddys who wanted their kids to play SS, pitch and bat 4th but that's all changed and the level of coaching and play has dramatically increased(their are still some idiots but not as many). Also in the higher levels of high school ball here in Mississippi the coaching is getting better and better(which I'm glad to see), there's a lot of good ones out there now. IMO the overall product in baseball is becoming better and better because you're getting better coaching and development of kids when they're younger(i.e. travel ball,etc.), high school coaching is becoming better and therefore college coaches are getting more polished kids in their programs. Also the access to quality personal training is a tremendous asset now. Heck when I was growing up these kind of things didn't exist, all we had was coach billy bob telling us to keep that back shoulder up and squash the bug lol, even at the high school level training was in the dark ages compared to now. I played at Meridian which was the largest school in the state then and we had more facilities and training available to us but still the average travel ball player now is getting more training than we got then. I'm proud to say baseball has come a long way overall but especially in Mississippi and the MSU baseball program was a huge part of that. Sorry for rambling but I could talk on this all day!