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2024 Youth Baseball - Every Kid’s a future MLB HOFer!!!


BrazilHorn

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Well here are once more into the breach. 
Holy crap this weekend was COLD!!!

Youngest 14U) team won first tournament of the season but man can Spring baseball get chilly. 
 

Best of luck to all the kids and parents lacing them up this year!!!

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1 hour ago, NorthLoop said:

4yo started T-ball this week. He's like Usain Bolt on the basepaths. Yall better watch out.

Make him sprint hills with 30 pounds on his back and he will be rocking 6.5 60s and turning all the coach pitch scouts heads in a few years

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This.........is my life for the next 12 years minimum. I love baseball and I love youth baseball, but man it feels like I'm really getting myself into something. I've got three boys. Oldest is in first grade. Im coaching my 5 year olds team and the parents are already completely nuts. Im pretty disgusted with the way some of them act, so I told myself I can be a whiny pussy about it or coach myself and try to give the kids a somewhat sane experience. 

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6 minutes ago, BlackCat said:

This.........is my life for the next 12 years minimum. I love baseball and I love youth baseball, but man it feels like I'm really getting myself into something. I've got three boys. Oldest is in first grade. Im coaching my 5 year olds team and the parents are already completely nuts. Im pretty disgusted with the way some of them act, so I told myself I can be a whiny pussy about it or coach myself and try to give the kids a somewhat sane experience. 

I have a Jr ball player in HS. There are always going to be those parents even as they get older but know that 5-10 is the absolute worst. 

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2 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

I have a Jr ball player in HS. There are always going to be those parents even as they get older but know that 5-10 is the absolute worst. 

I coached pony league for a few years after college. I was prepared for the psycho parents. I wasn't prepared for it to start in kindergarten though. First season was an eye opener into a side of human nature I didnt know about. Some of these people truly cant control themselves and rationality is nowhere to be found. Im sure everyone in here already knows this but I genuinely believe that in certain moments if you put a pistol in these peoples hands they would shoot the place up. 

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13 minutes ago, BlackCat said:

I coached pony league for a few years after college. I was prepared for the psycho parents. I wasn't prepared for it to start in kindergarten though. First season was an eye opener into a side of human nature I didnt know about. Some of these people truly cant control themselves and rationality is nowhere to be found. Im sure everyone in here already knows this but I genuinely believe that in certain moments if you put a pistol in these peoples hands they would shoot the place up. 

Baseball is a sport that singles you out and puts all your failures on public display.  Hard to hide in practice even harder to hide in a game. A lot of parents can't mentally or emotionally deal with it, especially when it’s happening to their precious 6 year old. 
 

The thing that is so stupid is none of it really matters. Puberty and maturity are the great equalizers. Until then just learn the game, learn to compete and be a good teammate and for gods sake have some fun. 
 

And yea as a sidenote. Back when my son was young was talking to one of the local youth association commisioners. Said he had to call the cops only once in his time in the gig….for a 5 year old T-Ball game

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I am an assistant for both my 10 YO's and 8 YO's teams this season. I usually help out or manage each season, depending upon what I have going on.

My 10 YO is playing up with the 11's and 12's and plays up in select ball too. He's a little stud who absolutely loves baseball and can't play enough. We have to regulate on him in the spring with all of the select opportunities that come from both his team and others trying to get him to pick up when his team isn't playing. 

Then there's my 8 YO. He's a little league 9YO because he will be 9 the final three days in August before the September 1 age cutoff. Sucks. We asked him if he wanted to play down with his classmates and do pitching machine. He was adamant that he wanted to play with his "age" level and do kid pitch. He should be playing down, but he was at least drafted by a guy that I've coached with before who was great for the boy when we last played with him. I have a 10 year old that went deep in a frigging 11 aaa tournament this winter when he was 9 and throws as hard as the 12s and an 8 year old that is still learning how to catch the ball with his glove regularly. It's quite the change from one night to the next. 

12 hours ago, BlackCat said:

I coached pony league for a few years after college. I was prepared for the psycho parents. I wasn't prepared for it to start in kindergarten though. First season was an eye opener into a side of human nature I didnt know about. Some of these people truly cant control themselves and rationality is nowhere to be found. Im sure everyone in here already knows this but I genuinely believe that in certain moments if you put a pistol in these peoples hands they would shoot the place up. 

1) I played in the PONY World Series when I was 14 and PONY ball was still a thing right before select took off and destroyed much of youth baseball. My wife and I were in Pittsburgh for the WVU game a few years ago and I convinced her to drive out to the PONY HQ with me one day. Lonely place, but a lot of cool memorabilia. Got to see the scorebooks with our games in them and my stats. 

2) One of the fistfights I got into growing up led to me having to do 30 hours of community service at the local YMCA when I was 16. They assigned me to umpiring tball games on Saturdays for a month. A 16 YO teenager umpiring 4-7 YO kids in games in which the scores were not kept. I played baseball for 13 years and have coached more than 10 different seasons (pitching machine and kid pitch) as an adult. I saw more crazy shit in 3 Saturdays umpiring tball than I've seen in the other 23 years of being on the field combined.

Parents were out there openly drinking booze in the morning. I saw two different fistfights between opposing parents. Two women with kids on the same team got into a knockdown, throwdown, hair-pulling violent fight. A guy brandished a gun to the other team and the cops came. One parent thought I was calling the game for the other team and had to be physically restrained by other parents from attacking me. The absolute craziest shit in youth sports happens in tball. 

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12 hours ago, Surly Bevo said:

Baseball is a sport that singles you out and puts all your failures on public display.  Hard to hide in practice even harder to hide in a game. A lot of parents can't mentally or emotionally deal with it, especially when it’s happening to their precious 6 year old. 
 

The thing that is so stupid is none of it really matters. Puberty and maturity are the great equalizers. Until then just learn the game, learn to compete and be a good teammate and for gods sake have some fun. 
 

And yea as a sidenote. Back when my son was young was talking to one of the local youth association commisioners. Said he had to call the cops only once in his time in the gig….for a 5 year old T-Ball game

This for sure. This is why parents go so crazy pre-puberty ages as they all believe that their kid will be the one. I coached for years (both select and LL) and the amount of pressure parents put on their kids is unreal. I really think this is why kids fall out of playing baseball. So many other sports you can play that don't allow for the bitching/griping at them by parents.

For the new LL coaches here is a good meme (believed it has been posted before) that helps you slot where you play kids

littleleague.jpg.e778b2750ef8e18a6ec813ccc5f4cb50.jpg

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This will be my 6th season coaching my 6yo (he’s a young 7U in LL, old 6U under select calendar). I get frustrated every season like I’m on a quixotic one man crusade to prioritize skills development, learning the game, and fostering a love for the game for EVERY PLAYER on the roster over winning LL games and getting a $5 ring. Most coaches in 6U and 7U ignore minimum play rules and keep their top kids at the same key positions all game. It helps them win but does no favors to their studs who don’t learn other positions (or how to be a good teammate or how to deal with losing) or the bottom half of their roster that get minimal IF experience. OTOH, having a losing record is no fun for my kids but I haven’t compromised on my approach. Every season I try to get other managers onboard but the Alpha Bro response is always “coach your team how you want and so will I.” It’s a beating sometimes, but I end up being the most requested coach by the parents. We ended up dropping from AAA to AA this spring. Hopefully the competition difference isn’t enough (among 7U lol) that it impairs my kids’ development but also giving us a chance at a winning record while affording the weaker half of the roster time at P, 1B, SS, etc. 

Tying into the discussion above, it’s all stupid to think that the best 5/6/7u players will be the best 12u or HS players later on. Some great 7u may quit because his parents put way too much on him. Some potential future stud may quit baseball in 7u because he had an asshole coach that played him in RF all game. 

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Chuy is a gap to gap hitter. 

I'm coaching my son's 10U select team again, we're pretty lucky to have a good set of kids and great parents who've been with us for a few years now. We can tell a big part of our success has been the consistency in our roster and culture we've tried to instill since our inception 4+ years ago. It's an absolute blast. 

Good luck to all those coaching and playing this spring!

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One of the best things about HS ball is you spend spring at games that are mostly but not all on weeknights (early season scrimmages and non-district tournaments can and do infringe on day games and weekends but that’s only for a few weeks)

 

Even travel ball in the summer usually the earliest game is 9am which makes a world of difference for whatever reason.

 

oh and there is the whole “they can drive themselves to stuff” part. 

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42 minutes ago, BrazilHorn said:

Son has 8am start in Manor on Saturday. FML.

We've had a couple of select tournaments this winter out in Sealy. That's 60+ minutes from doorstep to the field and the first game on Saturday was 8am both times. Got to be there an hour early. Getting up on a Saturday for kid's ball at 5:15am sucks. Sucks for the little kid too.

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26 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

We've had a couple of select tournaments this winter out in Sealy. That's 60+ minutes from doorstep to the field and the first game on Saturday was 8am both times. Got to be there an hour early. Getting up on a Saturday for kid's ball at 5:15am sucks. Sucks for the little kid too.

Few things light the fire to put a really strong team together more than wanting to avoid the   8-10am games on Saturday and Sunday.

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Just now, Nigel Tufnel said:

Few things light the fire to put a really strong team together more than wanting to avoid the   8-10am games on Saturday and Sunday.

I don't really know how it works since I don't coach select, but his native select team is really good and has won multiple tournaments and they still get the shaft on Saturdays. Obviously, Sundays are results based from Saturday and we rarely get that 8am. When he picks up for other select teams, we just assume we're fucked with the 8am game on Saturday and hope it's only in Katy or Sugarland.

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29 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

We've had a couple of select tournaments this winter out in Sealy. That's 60+ minutes from doorstep to the field and the first game on Saturday was 8am both times. Got to be there an hour early. Getting up on a Saturday for kid's ball at 5:15am sucks. Sucks for the little kid too.

Ouch. Manor ~30mins so would be like 5:45 vs the 5:15 you had to do. Better than when we have had tournaments in Seguin or Canyon Lake. Good news is I will be able to catch Horns baseball game Saturday @ 2:30

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I started select ball around 10 and I had a blast the entire time. Going to the slump buster in Omaha then turning around watching the CWS  at Rosenblatt is one of the highlights of my life. Weekends doing nothing but playing baseball and staying in hotels if it was far enough (we were the little shits playing tag up and down the place hotel) was peak for me in the summers. Once I got into high school some of the friends I played with or against throughout the years didn’t love it enough anymore which was sad to see because they were usually only there because of the parents forcing them. A lot of us were multi-sport athletes so during fall ball it was football all week, then film on Saturday and a double header on Sunday. They were good players too but it was obvious burn out had set in and it was taking the joy out of other sports they played. Select ball is fun but there is a stopping point for some and watching parents live through their kids is a miserable scene. 

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1 hour ago, Nigel Tufnel said:

Few things light the fire to put a really strong team together more than wanting to avoid the   8-10am games on Saturday and Sunday.

Team won tournament last weekend and drew the 8am. Obviously Sunday start based on Saturday results but Saturday usually doesn’t have much to do with prior record. 
 

Challenge for my kid is he is 14U so HS fields and there just aren’t many of them if you get a big tournament (there are four AAA 14U brackets this weekend eg) so teams are spread all over. We just got stuck early in Manor

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Need some advice on swings. A bunch of the kids on our team a pretty good hitters for their age (6,7,8 year olds, machine pitch) at least in terms of making contact. None of them do any sort of load though so their timing is all over the place. Any drills to get them to load and get better timing?

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11 hours ago, Mez2 said:

Chuy is a gap to gap hitter. 

I'm coaching my son's 10U select team again, we're pretty lucky to have a good set of kids and great parents who've been with us for a few years now. We can tell a big part of our success has been the consistency in our roster and culture we've tried to instill since our inception 4+ years ago. It's an absolute blast. 

Good luck to all those coaching and playing this spring!


any single moms ?

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11 hours ago, hobbes2702 said:

Need some advice on swings. A bunch of the kids on our team a pretty good hitters for their age (6,7,8 year olds, machine pitch) at least in terms of making contact. None of them do any sort of load though so their timing is all over the place. Any drills to get them to load and get better timing?

At that age, we would run variations of this drill. I would use either a speed hurdle, or small soccer done also as a point of reference for their backside. Set the object down on towards back leg. on command, they would slowly step back over the object, engage hip, get into a launch position and swing away. I'd usually have my son hold his swing at extension but they can also do it as a full swing. I like to ask the boys if they can feel the tension on their back hip once they do it correctly vs when they don't. You can do it off a tee, soft toss, angled toss, or front toss and run. A skater drill would also be similar in where they would basically hop from back to side to front side back to back side and then swing away. 

I'd also used to get a piece of foam from one of our PT clinics and put on back side and tell the boys to push down into the ground as hard as possible to engage their hip. Lots of times they they don't know what to feel for, I ask the boys if they know what a corkscrew is and explain what that does, our back side/core should look close to that motion. 

I liked doing this drill too, to help the boys know what the load portion felt like, basically isolating the steps of a swing. Hard to start doing more advanced drills if we don't have the basics. Pretty simple but I felt it was a great one, especially at early age.

Theres a bunch more you can find, Josh Cathcart has some great ones on YouTube also, hope this gives you a start 

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Pretty sure I will cross paths with you assholes this year and not know it. My youngest is in select for the first time at 9u. He is working his ass off to be great. I am gonna miss a bunch of his play because I am coaching his older brother in 12u rec league. I am stoked to finally coach him. He is the most fundamentally sound unathletic kid I have ever seen. He will be our no 1 pitcher though. He can straight deal. Killer 4 seam, 2 seam, change and curve combo. I told him the challenge is to beat his 15 strikeout game from last year.  Super excited.

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Had our first practice on Saturday. We are all huddled around and our coach is doing a head count, we are missing one kid. Three of our kids are from a different school and none of us know them. As we are talking about who the missing kid is, this big jacked up dual exhaust truck comes tearing ass through the parking lot. Driving about 10x too fast with little kids and families entering and exiting cars. Our coach joked he hopes thats not him, and sure enough it parks right in front of our field. Dad gets out with a full leg and arm tat sleeve wearing white frame oakleys. Kid gets out wearing..........an OU hat and shirt. All I could think was some stereotypes exist for a reason. 

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At what age do you select dads find that it starts to click for most kids or is every high level kid quite different? Last year our 6u all stars rolled through a joke summer rec league based only on physical talent. Last fall the kids got picked for “AAA” rec ball and they made a jump, but nothing like I’ve seen at a couple 9U select games. Now we’re playing a different rec league with AAA and several select or ex-select kids mixed into the other teams. These boys as first graders might be better than I was at third or fourth grade, but they are still 6 and 7 and have 30 second attention spans. I’m hoping there’s a natural mental leap around the corner and that I’m not holding back their development due to inexperienced coaching. 

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18 minutes ago, Murfdogg21 said:

At what age do you select dads find that it starts to click for most kids or is every high level kid quite different? Last year our 6u all stars rolled through a joke summer rec league based only on physical talent. Last fall the kids got picked for “AAA” rec ball and they made a jump, but nothing like I’ve seen at a couple 9U select games. Now we’re playing a different rec league with AAA and several select or ex-select kids mixed into the other teams. These boys as first graders might be better than I was at third or fourth grade, but they are still 6 and 7 and have 30 second attention spans. I’m hoping there’s a natural mental leap around the corner and that I’m not holding back their development due to inexperienced coaching. 

I think it is different for every kid but by 9U I am seeing the change. The PG tournaments where they have Majors teams are eye opening. My son dominated rec league, now he is playing on a AA team. He is still one of the better players on the team if not the best (per the coaches ranking not mine) but some of the other kids I have seen at his level at these tournaments are elite. Watching a 9 year old throw harder than I could blows my mind. My son works his tail off and we will see how the season goes, but there are levels to this shit and he isn't close to the elite level.

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Wish they'd go back to the old school stir up socks. It's almost impossible to find baseball pants that fit correctly out of the box. The size difference between Nike, UA, Mizuno and rawlings is crazy. If you find a name brand your kid likes stick to it.

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On 2/19/2024 at 10:53 PM, BlackCat said:

This.........is my life for the next 12 years minimum. I love baseball and I love youth baseball, but man it feels like I'm really getting myself into something. I've got three boys. Oldest is in first grade. Im coaching my 5 year olds team and the parents are already completely nuts. Im pretty disgusted with the way some of them act, so I told myself I can be a whiny pussy about it or coach myself and try to give the kids a somewhat sane experience. 

It could be worse - you could have girls in softball. Softball dad coaches are sooooo much worse than baseball in my experience. 

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32 minutes ago, Jshep34 said:

We are in that super nit also. Our games are at katy national .

I grew up playing on the fields at Katy national, and Katy pony. I coached my kids at both parks as well.

It’s going to be a mad house this weekend at Morton and Hockley. They just opened a HEB last week at that intersection. You might want to take a Uber to the game. Parking will be fucking crazy with soccer starting and baseball. Tex Tacos has great taco’s across the street.
 

 

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5 hours ago, Planet Houston said:

So, Surly tailgate in La Porte this weekend @Jshep34 and @closetojumping

Mine is 9U AAA. Good luck this weekend! Only bummer is having to miss the ballgames at Minute Maid. 

My boy picked up for a 10U AAA team that he played with last summer. Apparently, they’re playing in Magnolia. Should be a beating. 

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