Youth baseball: Develop or profit? Toxicity from innocence

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This also lends to the harm this culture has to the future generations of baseball. Unlike some of their international counterparts, such as the Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan that laud their stars.

Baseball has done an extremely poor job of promoting their stars. Nolan Arenado and Mike Trout are two of the best players on the planet and very few children outside of their home markets can tell you who they are. Now, mix this anonymity of success with the real-world effect of the burnout this culture causes as we just saw in young Andy.

I’m not going to sit here and say Andy would have been the next coming of Nolan Ryan. But we will never know, as we will never know about the above mentioned 70 percent, of young athletes that burnout and quit sports completely before the age of 13.

They both also echoed the need for informed coaching. This should be a non-negotiable starter, but in this day and age where every day a new league is popping up to grab a slice of that enormous pie. There almost seems an acceptance of negligence, because parents are so invested in their children and their sport(s) of choice, they are sometimes too willing to jump at any opportunity to give their child a leg-up on the next kid.

So now, we circle back to the one pillar that can truly rock the other two things: parents. It has long switched from a young athlete-driven league, it’s parents. Just make sure you know the pros and cons of your involvement.

Also, please make sure you are researching the league you are putting your children in. Make sure they are arming their coaches with the information and training necessary to properly develop your child, not just the most efficient one in making a profit.

If you would like to hear the interviews in their entirety, including these interesting and informative stories, you can listen to them here.