5 ms·

I’m curious since you actually went through the effort to be a part of the org: why do we need to formalize everything? Why not just get kids together to play

I’m curious since you actually went through the effort to be a part of the org: why do we need to formalize everything? Why not just get kids together to play baseball? Why capital Little capital League? Why do we have to normalize towards an organizational system? Academically it all makes sense; our scientific truth must be rigorously vetted. This all just feels like busy work for no gain for most people. I really don’t get the fucking point? Is it so hard to set up a game between your kids and others as human beings? Why pomp and circumstance?

GeneralMayhem 6y ago
You absolutely can find recreational leagues that are less rigorous - although for safety reasons they'll still tend to be particular about ages. Baseball is a relatively dangerous sport if there's a massive imbalance. It's important that pitch speed, bat speed, reaction times, and overall mass scale up smoothly and roughly uniformly. The reason why it's so formalized beyond that is that travel ball at 11-12 years old is the beginning of the pipeline to the pros. There are millions of dollars of signing bonuses waiting just a few years down the line, but you don't get drafted unless you're a high school star, and you don't get to play for the high school varsity team unless you're getting the coaching from the top-tier youth leagues.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  > you don't get to play for the high school varsity team unless you're getting the coaching from the top-tier youth leagues This is pretty much the case. By age 12 or so, the local kids who have skill and interest have been identified. They are shunted out of the parks and rec leagues into travel teams and they play together up to high school. Of course there are still tryouts but if you're a freshman and unknown to the coaches, you have to be either a move-in who has been playing travel ball elsewhere, or one of the rare naturals at pitching or hitting to really get noticed at that point.
- Retric 6y ago
  Why not cover the safety aspect with simple height and or weight ranges like boxing etc? That seems like it would work better and is much easier to check.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    Because thats less monetizable.
  - neolog 6y ago
    There is probably some risk of incentivizing kids to mess with their weight.
    - Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
      Yeah, weight classes in kids' sports are a terrible idea. The only exception is in individual combat sports (wrestling or judo, for instance). In those cases, not only is it a safety issue, but the 'penalty' for failing to make weight is just that you have to compete in the next weight class up, not that you or your team are ejected from the competition. European rowers (and I include British people here) are kind of shocked that the US has lightweight categories at high-school level. I suppose, though, that if people are chasing lucrative scholarships to college lightweight teams that might be an incentive...
      - alistairSH 6y ago
        * I suppose, though, that if people are chasing lucrative scholarships to college lightweight teams that might be an incentive...* Scholarships for men's rowing largely don't exist. There are a few schools with full varsity programs, but not many. Women's rowing, as a scholarship activity, is a largely new thing - there was a massive increase in women's rowing in the 1990s in order to comply with federal regulations. The men's football (American, not soccer) team has 85 scholarships available - rowing is an easy way to add 20+ women's scholarships. As for lightweights in high school, I was one. If there was no lightweight program, I likely would have stuck to XC running. No way I could compete against the typical 180lb+ heavyweight at 140lbs.
throwawayboise 6y ago
The national league organizations do a lot of good things. I would say that most importantly they have standardized coaching education, e.g. what should kids be learning at each age level. Then locally you have clubs and leagues that operate to schedule games and do all the legwork of reserving time on fields for games and practices, raising funds to pay for it, handling communication with parents, etc. Sure if you just want to just show up at the park on Saturday afternoon to see who else is there and hit the ball around, you can do that. Without some structure and organization, it will never go beyond that.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Why not just get kids together to play baseball? You can, if everyone trusts everyone involved, and you just want some casual fun. But beyond that... Some of the developmental/training issues have been mentioned, as well as some allusion to safety. Also related is liability; do it enough and there are going to be injuries, some of them serious. And if you haven't planned for this, it's quite easy for someone to unexpectedly end up responsible for a huge unexpected liability.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  That's a very US perspective. In nations with socialized health care, there's no liability to worry about.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    Little League is a very US institution, but even in places with socialized healthcare there are non-medical costs of injuries and potential liability attached to them, and anyway, while universal coverage is common outside of the US, many nations acheive it without socialized medicine.
    - FloatArtifact 6y ago
      "while universal coverage is common outside of the US, many nations acheive it without socialized medicine." Can you expound on that further and provide some sources for future reading?
      - bonzini 6y ago
        I guess it's referring to private insurance schemes like on Germany or Switzerland, which however are highly subsidized and/or regulated.
  - jacobr1 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure non-pecuniary damages are ground for civil cases in plenty of non-US jurisdictions.
topkai22 6y ago
>> Is it so hard to set up a game between your kids and others? Yes. Yes, it is actually reasonably hard to coordinate 18+ kids and thier familes (thats the minimum size for two baseball teams), have an experienced adult coach them, and hire a referee (if that is judged to be necessary), coordinate field usage, advocate for local governments to set aside sports and play space and protect existing space from development. Now are many American youth sports leagues a bit nuts about the competitive or developmental aspects? Absolutely, and baseball is one of the worst. I really want a checkbox that says "do you want your kids to play in the major leagues some day" so I can not check that and hang out with other parents just there for fun. But coordinating sports and recreation (and ensuring space and facilities for sports and recreation exist in the first place) is not a trivial exercise and is why most local governments have an entire department set aside for it. Parks and Recreation may be a funny and absurd series, but in real life those people do real work that has real benefits.
- Teever 6y ago
  > Yes. Yes, it is actually reasonably hard to coordinate 18+ kids and thier familes (thats the minimum size for two baseball teams), have an experienced adult coach them, and hire a referee (if that is judged to be necessary), coordinate field usage, advocate for local governments to set aside sports and play space and protect existing space from development. How did people coordinate this before the invention of all these digital communication devices that we now find our selves so desperately dependent on like we're stuck in The Matrix?
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    >How did people coordinate this... I think you might be referring to a time when kids could play unsupervised and before independence-building play was replaced with wall-to-wall no-trespassing signs and overseen by a system that makes sure each minor transgression is forever leveraged into multiple, life-harming punishments.
    - caturopath 6y ago
      Sports leagues have been a thing for generations, so it's worth noting that the answer to "What did you do before all this digital stuff" isn't "kids just did their own thing" -- they still organized leagues. (Fewer of them, to be sure.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cosmonaughty 6y ago
Bingo. You said it. Little league is overrated. It won't be long before Bubba the 50 year old alcoholic identifies as his inner child and joins the team. Remember the scandals with the Boy Skirts of America? Why does a corporate entity want access to children, anyway?

GeneralMayhem 6y ago

You absolutely can find recreational leagues that are less rigorous - although for safety reasons they'll still tend to be particular about ages. Baseball is a relatively dangerous sport if there's a massive imbalance. It's important that pitch speed, bat speed, reaction times, and overall mass scale up smoothly and roughly uniformly. The reason why it's so formalized beyond that is that travel ball at 11-12 years old is the beginning of the pipeline to the pros. There are millions of dollars of signing bonuses waiting just a few years down the line, but you don't get drafted unless you're a high school star, and you don't get to play for the high school varsity team unless you're getting the coaching from the top-tier youth leagues.

throwawayboise 6y ago
> you don't get to play for the high school varsity team unless you're getting the coaching from the top-tier youth leagues This is pretty much the case. By age 12 or so, the local kids who have skill and interest have been identified. They are shunted out of the parks and rec leagues into travel teams and they play together up to high school. Of course there are still tryouts but if you're a freshman and unknown to the coaches, you have to be either a move-in who has been playing travel ball elsewhere, or one of the rare naturals at pitching or hitting to really get noticed at that point.
Retric 6y ago
Why not cover the safety aspect with simple height and or weight ranges like boxing etc? That seems like it would work better and is much easier to check.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  Because thats less monetizable.
- neolog 6y ago
  There is probably some risk of incentivizing kids to mess with their weight.
  - Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
    Yeah, weight classes in kids' sports are a terrible idea. The only exception is in individual combat sports (wrestling or judo, for instance). In those cases, not only is it a safety issue, but the 'penalty' for failing to make weight is just that you have to compete in the next weight class up, not that you or your team are ejected from the competition. European rowers (and I include British people here) are kind of shocked that the US has lightweight categories at high-school level. I suppose, though, that if people are chasing lucrative scholarships to college lightweight teams that might be an incentive...
    - alistairSH 6y ago
      * I suppose, though, that if people are chasing lucrative scholarships to college lightweight teams that might be an incentive...* Scholarships for men's rowing largely don't exist. There are a few schools with full varsity programs, but not many. Women's rowing, as a scholarship activity, is a largely new thing - there was a massive increase in women's rowing in the 1990s in order to comply with federal regulations. The men's football (American, not soccer) team has 85 scholarships available - rowing is an easy way to add 20+ women's scholarships. As for lightweights in high school, I was one. If there was no lightweight program, I likely would have stuck to XC running. No way I could compete against the typical 180lb+ heavyweight at 140lbs.

throwawayboise 6y ago

The national league organizations do a lot of good things. I would say that most importantly they have standardized coaching education, e.g. what should kids be learning at each age level. Then locally you have clubs and leagues that operate to schedule games and do all the legwork of reserving time on fields for games and practices, raising funds to pay for it, handling communication with parents, etc. Sure if you just want to just show up at the park on Saturday afternoon to see who else is there and hit the ball around, you can do that. Without some structure and organization, it will never go beyond that.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Why not just get kids together to play baseball? You can, if everyone trusts everyone involved, and you just want some casual fun. But beyond that... Some of the developmental/training issues have been mentioned, as well as some allusion to safety. Also related is liability; do it enough and there are going to be injuries, some of them serious. And if you haven't planned for this, it's quite easy for someone to unexpectedly end up responsible for a huge unexpected liability.

alisonkisk 6y ago
That's a very US perspective. In nations with socialized health care, there's no liability to worry about.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Little League is a very US institution, but even in places with socialized healthcare there are non-medical costs of injuries and potential liability attached to them, and anyway, while universal coverage is common outside of the US, many nations acheive it without socialized medicine.
  - FloatArtifact 6y ago
    "while universal coverage is common outside of the US, many nations acheive it without socialized medicine." Can you expound on that further and provide some sources for future reading?
    - bonzini 6y ago
      I guess it's referring to private insurance schemes like on Germany or Switzerland, which however are highly subsidized and/or regulated.
- jacobr1 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure non-pecuniary damages are ground for civil cases in plenty of non-US jurisdictions.

topkai22 6y ago

>> Is it so hard to set up a game between your kids and others? Yes. Yes, it is actually reasonably hard to coordinate 18+ kids and thier familes (thats the minimum size for two baseball teams), have an experienced adult coach them, and hire a referee (if that is judged to be necessary), coordinate field usage, advocate for local governments to set aside sports and play space and protect existing space from development. Now are many American youth sports leagues a bit nuts about the competitive or developmental aspects? Absolutely, and baseball is one of the worst. I really want a checkbox that says "do you want your kids to play in the major leagues some day" so I can not check that and hang out with other parents just there for fun. But coordinating sports and recreation (and ensuring space and facilities for sports and recreation exist in the first place) is not a trivial exercise and is why most local governments have an entire department set aside for it. Parks and Recreation may be a funny and absurd series, but in real life those people do real work that has real benefits.

Teever 6y ago
> Yes. Yes, it is actually reasonably hard to coordinate 18+ kids and thier familes (thats the minimum size for two baseball teams), have an experienced adult coach them, and hire a referee (if that is judged to be necessary), coordinate field usage, advocate for local governments to set aside sports and play space and protect existing space from development. How did people coordinate this before the invention of all these digital communication devices that we now find our selves so desperately dependent on like we're stuck in The Matrix?
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  >How did people coordinate this... I think you might be referring to a time when kids could play unsupervised and before independence-building play was replaced with wall-to-wall no-trespassing signs and overseen by a system that makes sure each minor transgression is forever leveraged into multiple, life-harming punishments.
  - caturopath 6y ago
    Sports leagues have been a thing for generations, so it's worth noting that the answer to "What did you do before all this digital stuff" isn't "kids just did their own thing" -- they still organized leagues. (Fewer of them, to be sure.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cosmonaughty 6y ago

Bingo. You said it. Little league is overrated. It won't be long before Bubba the 50 year old alcoholic identifies as his inner child and joins the team. Remember the scandals with the Boy Skirts of America? Why does a corporate entity want access to children, anyway?