Travel Baseball and Little League

I agree with you on several points.

Minors. These are the kids who are going to be in your majors program. Only 15% of our Majors kids were drafted directly out of Farm League. The remainder came from the minors. Build your minors and the level of play in your majors program will improve. Like any investment, it takes time to see the result. We started to see it this year when our 11/12 made it to the District finals for the first time in 16 years.

A coach in our minors program took a group of 10 year-olds to a local tournament. They finished 3-2, with losses by 3 and 1 runs. Not bad for a MINORS team. It was fun watching the kids play. It was even more fun watching all our MAJORS coaches on the sidelines with clipboards, salivating over next year's draft.

I also agree that WAAAAAAY too much emphasis is placed on All-Stars. Our regular season is now down to 16 games because Eastern Regional went to a Round-Robin. Our All-Stars begin before July 4th. We must now begin our regular season in April --- not a fun time to be playing baseball in our area. We've had coaches lose pre-season practices to snow.

I think it is wrong that 190 kids' season has to end early so that 12-14 can continue.

I also won't let our league break rules to win in the All-Stars. My favorite is a nearby town which must field two All-Star teams. After the draft, they "realign" their North/South teams to put all the strong teams together.

At our District Meeting, they running joke is when someone asks "Which is the strong league this year?"

Another town has special "practices" open to all 12 year-olds. However only 12-14 kids are actually notified of the date and time of these practices. Funny how those kids (and those kids alone) always make the All-Star team. Those practices must be really great, right?

And for what? You win the District Championship, get knocked out of Sectionals by someone who is even more creative in rule-bending.

Meanwhile you're teaching these kids that it's OK to break rules if it is to your advantage, and it is only illegal if you get caught.

AND ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT --- these teams still can't hold a candle to the better travel teams.

I am a big proponent of Little League. Properly administered, it is a good way for kids to learn to play the game. But I disagree with them on All-Stars.

If they want to go this route, why not create two DISTRICT teams, play best 4 of 7 and the winning team advances to sectionals. While all this is going on, the regular season can continue in the local leagues, who've likely only lost 2-3 players to the All-Star team.

Allow these District teams to play together all year (in addition to their local LL games - with the understanding that local games are secondary in importance), and allow them to play anyone, anywhere, anytime. Maybe then you'd see the higher quality of play as a true travel team while at the same time keeping LL oriented towards it's all-inclusive mission.

Northampton Little League