Our boys had played Little League Baseball in Weedsport, NY, and naturally wanted to sign up for a Little League team when we moved. But when we arrived at the first practices, I soon learned this wasn't the Little League I had grown up with.
First of all, in Texas they play a fall season as well as a spring season, which I think is pretty cool.
Each boy brings his own glove, hat, batting gloves, and bat. Nothing unusual. This is the way we did it when I was a kid, except the league provided all of the bats and gear (which the coach lugged to the field in a green, canvas, drawn-string sack with balls and extra gloves at the bottom).
But these kids did not have your ordinary bats. These were $200 bats with "pop" in them, and they were stored in personal, $80 baseball bags that contained extra gloves, bats, and sometimes personal catcher's gear. It would be nothing to drop $500 at Academy Sports to fit out one kid for baseball season, if you went all the way.
Practices were held mostly at the ball fields, but sometimes they were held in the backyard of one of the kids on the team. You see, it wasn't unusual for a dad to buy and install a pitching machine and a 30- to 40-foot nylon-netted hitting cage right in the backyard.
And if you really wanted to be a competitor on this team, you needed to play simultaneously on a second team, called a Select Team. You pay $1,000 to $2,000 per season, and your kid gets to travel several weekends a month to play in tournaments against other Select Teams.
Now, I am not knocking Texas. The baseball story here is the same as in many other parts of the country. And I don't mean to judge kids or parents who choose to play on Select teams. Families who go the Select route spend meaningful time together when they travel to these tournaments. My nieces, in fact, play on Select soccer teams in north Dallas and have done remarkably well. I am very proud of them.
To be honest, I am probably even a little jealous that I cannot afford to sign each of my kids up for a Select baseball or football team, or that as a pastor I do not have the freedom to "take off" on Sundays and support my kids at the ball field.
I simply want to say thank you to city leagues that still offer opportunities for kids to play at the "amateur" level. As a Dad with a finite source of income, I say thank you for $75 registration fees that include a team shirt, a team hat, and a field to play on. I say thank you that my kids can play games that take me no more than 15 from my front door on weeknights and Saturdays, and that never play on Sundays.
I don't know if my kids will be the next Manny Ramirez or Albert Pujols, but I am thankful that they can still enjoy a great sport and dream of great things like the rest of them.
Let's play ball!
