Whoa really? Was the youth sports thing discussed elsewhere prior? What are the theories behind that?
The leading theories, none of which can exactly be run as a controlled experiment, can be boiled down to:
1. Industrialization: Increased focus on competition, and higher participation cost, at expense of enjoyment or healthy living
2. Spectator Culture: Aggressive parents on sidelines, tense atmosphere; kids drop out when they realize they can’t be "the best" and meet perceived standards
3. Lack of Role Models: A cutthroat professional system encourages aggression, misconduct, and seeing opponents as enemies
There are lots of articles about this trend. The bigger question in my mind is why baseball has avoided the precipitous drop that other major sports have seen in youth participation - because, looking at it even from the perspective of an informed fan, all 3 of those threads seem to be present in baseball. Maybe not
quite as much as youth football or soccer, but no less so than (say) basketball or track. In the town I just moved to, we have friends with boys aged 6 and 8 who play baseball, and already they're hearing that if they're not paying extra to play fall ball, or taking extra private lessons to work on skills during downtime, then they're going to be left behind by the travel teams and lose any hope of playing beyond little league.