Quote Originally Posted by sportsfanatic21 View Post
Travel or "select" baseball is all well and good for kids that are in high school, as long as there are responsible coaches in charge. But it's gotten to the point where its basically mandatory for any player that has aspirations to play any further than low level high school ball.

But it absolutely is killing the sport in the youth age groups. I have friends that are spending their entire weekends traveling all over the state, and paying thousands of dollars for their SIX year old sons to play baseball! That's ridiculous.
That is nuts. My kid was 10 and came home one day and told me he wanted to play travel ball. I didn't even know what it was.

He wanted to play travel ball in addition to LL, cuz Little League wasn't enough baseball for him. OK, I said. We had just one kid, so that's what he did until he got to high school. He played both because he wanted to play both. I just drove the car.

Most kids should simply play LL and whatever community based sports they like, soccer, LAX, whatever. Their interests and/or abilities might go in other directions as they get older. Play with your friends in the local league. The vast majority of LL players don't make the transition to the big field, anyway.