Quote Originally Posted by StarkVegasSteve View Post
You're pretty much spot on. These small towns in the South don't have good rec leagues anymore. Kids that only play rec ball til they're 11 or 12 are so far behind the travel ball kids from a developmental standpoint when they get to Jr High that most end up quitting. I mean you're talking going from seeing kids who throw a flat 60 mph FB to a kid throwing a 78 mph fastball with some run. They've never seen anything like that with any regularity.

I agree with you on the negatives as well, out of the travel ball kids I knew growing up I would 7 to 8 out of 10 quit either baseball or another sport when they faced any type of adversity. And some of them couldn't crack the field at the high school level in baseball because they took that travel ball mentality of if I have two hits over a 4 game span then that's successful.

Also I know exactly what you mean about some of those "other traits". It's fine when a major leaguer stares down or does a little celebration when they had a 400 ft bomb. But when a 13 yr old with 9 chains on tries to pimp a 250 ft HR that barely clears the wall then his coach needs to chew his around the bases. If you're Ronald Acuna you can act like Ronald Acuna, but when you're little Jimmy playing for the 13U Mississippi Express then settle the hell down.
100% on all this. The competition is so poor in rec league you're just wasting your time. When my son was 9 we faced a kid in a championship game that pitches for lsu now and that kid was 60mph+ at 47 feet at 9. You don't see that in rec league at 9. First ab my son doubled off the left field wall on a fb, next ab he got him to popup on a nasty changeup. Kid was more polished on the mound than some of the ones ive seen in hs. What 9 year old has that kind of velo and a changeup. Of course it helped Ben McDonald was his pitching coach.