WSJ Looks at Why Kids Are Abandoning Baseball

Doug Beerabelli

Killer Threads
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Baseball particpation numbers are down in my town, which probably would be in the affluent suburb category.    Not near fold up numbers, but not a good sign.   Some of it is certainly travel baseball, most of it likely lacrosse.   My kid does the town travel team, which is affiliated with, but participates separately from the local league, but I'm invovled with the local league board of directors, so I see what's going on.   The overall downward trend of sports participation is disappointing.
 

Cumberland Blues

Moderator
Moderator
SoSH Member
Sep 9, 2001
5,193
From the article...this is absolutely insane...
 


The company’s website includes national rankings for teams in age groups that begin at “4 and under.”
 
Heaven forbid you don't make that travel U4 team - you'll never make varsity!
 

Lose Remerswaal

Experiencing Furry Panic
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
The Red Sox and most (all?) other MLB teams participate in the RBI program (one time that RBI matters!), which helps build fields and provide equipment to city kids.  It won't help with the suburbs as much (although the equipment donations do go there as well).  It helps, but there's more help needed of course
 

Fred not Lynn

Dick Button Jr.
SoSH Member
Jul 13, 2005
5,253
Alberta
One of the problems with baseball, that no one seems to address, is that it's a complicated game, which you need certain skills to enjoy.

You can't just take kids who don't know how to throw, catch and hit and expect them to step onto a diamond and have fun playing the game using essentially the same setup and rules as adult professional players. You actually need to take time and get those skills built first - and few if any systems do this, because of the traditional thirst society has for a "game" and "standings". If it were up to me, kids under 8 or 9 or so would just learn skills in an instructional program tricked into having fun playing games that more specifically focus on the skills of baseball, rather than actual baseball.

There is nothing fun about a t-ball game where no one ever makes and out and it's a 15-15 tie after three five-run limit innings...and most places, that's how a 5 year old gets introduced to baseball.
 

Gagliano

Ask me about my mollusks
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Sep 19, 2001
5,812
Maine
One of the problems with baseball, that no one seems to address, is that it's a complicated game, which you need certain skills to enjoy.

You can't just take kids who don't know how to throw, catch and hit and expect them to step onto a diamond and have fun playing the game using essentially the same setup and rules as adult professional players. You actually need to take time and get those skills built first - and few if any systems do this, because of the traditional thirst society has for a "game" and "standings". If it were up to me, kids under 8 or 9 or so would just learn skills in an instructional program tricked into having fun playing games that more specifically focus on the skills of baseball, rather than actual baseball.

There is nothing fun about a t-ball game where no one ever makes and out and it's a 15-15 tie after three five-run limit innings...and most places, that's how a 5 year old gets introduced to baseball.
You know what the worst thing is about baseball for kids? Parents. No, baseball is not a complicated game from the kids' perspective. A hundred years ago when I was a kid, we just went out in a field and played for hours, making up rules as we went, and didn't even have teams if we only had five guys or so. We did it without parents standing there pretending to be interested, and we used whatever equipment we had. And based on what I see today, we had a 1000 times more fun.

I know that sounded fuddy-duddyish, but it's easy to suck the fun out of baseball. In grade school, as soon as the mud in the schoolyard dried up, we were playing catch during every recess. Now? The kids aren't allowed to throw a baseball on school grounds unless it is supervised by a coach during organized ball.
 

Fred not Lynn

Dick Button Jr.
SoSH Member
Jul 13, 2005
5,253
Alberta
You know, the other problem I was going to get to was the lack of "free play", where you just go at it in an unstructured environment for hours. Same deal with hockey...you need that time to really become automatic.

Problem is that that parent and youth sport industry driven programing doesn't make space this sort of thing.
 

HriniakPosterChild

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 6, 2006
14,841
500 feet above Lake Sammammish
Gagliano said:
You know what the worst thing is about baseball for kids? Parents. No, baseball is not a complicated game from the kids' perspective. A hundred years ago when I was a kid, we just went out in a field and played for hours, making up rules as we went, and didn't even have teams if we only had five guys or so. We did it without parents standing there pretending to be interested, and we used whatever equipment we had. And based on what I see today, we had a 1000 times more fun.

I know that sounded fuddy-duddyish, but it's easy to suck the fun out of baseball. In grade school, as soon as the mud in the schoolyard dried up, we were playing catch during every recess. Now? The kids aren't allowed to throw a baseball on school grounds unless it is supervised by a coach during organized ball.
 
My kid is in his first year of little league, which is very well described by this very entertaining Doug Glanville piece (which seems to be coach-pitch baseball, despite the column's title).
 
I think back to the 1960's when I grep up. Yeah, we'd play baseball in sandlots without adult supervision, but I think what was most important was that the kids were different ages. You'd play on the same field with your older brother's friends, and some of them had little brothers about your age. So the older kids could help the younger kids with some of the skills.
 
If you let your kids play now with older kids and without adult supervision, you are risking a call to DSHS.
 

BoredViewer

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
3,092
+1 for growing up in a different era.
 
Summer of '82 -- growing up outside of St. Louis.  The Cardinals were hot and I was 8.  Spent that entire summer playing pickup baseball in this common/park area in the middle of my neighborhood.  When we got bored, we'd go fish at the pond or hike around in the woods.
 
I'd usually take off early in the morning on my bike... parents wouldn't see me again til I got hungry.  
 

Spacemans Bong

chapeau rose
SoSH Member
The fact that soccer, the sport that's supposed to take over America just like it took over the world, has had only a marginally smaller decline than baseball tells you that it's not because baseball is boring, or because baseball is too traditional, or whatnot. There's a wider problem.
 
Yes, rugby and lacrosse are booming but those sports are small fry. I think something like 300,000 kids, max, play rugby every year.
 
Baseball gets the brunt of attention because it's the national pastime and there's practically a cottage industry in American handwringing about baseball, but the problem is that it appears that kids who, as the article says, "won't be the next Willie Mays and don't want to be" are dropping sports like a hot potato. Adults have made sports not fun for kids. 
 

AlNipper49

Huge Member
Dope
SoSH Member
Apr 3, 2001
44,853
Mtigawi
Fred not Lynn said:
You know, the other problem I was going to get to was the lack of "free play", where you just go at it in an unstructured environment for hours. Same deal with hockey...you need that time to really become automatic.

Problem is that that parent and youth sport industry driven programing doesn't make space this sort of thing.
 
This is exactly the issue.  We'd go to practice and my son would basically stand in fucking line waiting to take a single grounder then move to the back.  The head coach of the program was an asshole too, he spent half of the time making sure that everyone knew exactly how much he knew by delivering the speeches from the pitching mound.
 
The greatest illustration of how wrong this is/was is during one of the breaks, instead of well, "breaking", the kids invested a game where they had to run between the bases while one of the other kids would try to pelt them with a baseball.  They were having a blaste but got yelled at.
 
So I ended up volunteering to coach.  I Was an assistant coach and the head coach (not the wiener from above, he was the league director guy who would run these huge all-league practices) was actually a good guy.  Our "practices" were basically teaching just one damn fundamental and then making games around it.   Like "running to first base".  It was amazing that other teams the kids didn't even know how to run to first base (yet had maybe 2x more practices than we did).  So we'd setup races to first, see who could hit first base with a baseball, stupid stuff like that.  The kids had a blast.  The next damn "league practice" the head wiener had the kids (5 year olds) taking grounders with a piece of wood for a glove.  Yeah, I've seen that drill again, but I don't know if anyone has ever held a t-ball glove, but they're basically a piece of wood anyhow.  So frustrating. We quit and will be rejoining a league when we move in a few weeks. 
 

75cent bleacher seat

Well-Known Member
Gold Supporter
SoSH Member
Little League competes with electronic games/devices also...yes?  There's a 60,000 gal.swimming pool in my community consisting of 69 homes.  Pictures of days gone by that pool was full of kids not so anymore...I agree with the posts prior to mine and I too looked forward to the day when spring was in the air and we could come out of semi-hibernation and play catch and swing a bat. Unfortunately times change.
 

Gagliano

Ask me about my mollusks
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Sep 19, 2001
5,812
Maine
Fred not Lynn said:
You know, the other problem I was going to get to was the lack of "free play", where you just go at it in an unstructured environment for hours. Same deal with hockey...you need that time to really become automatic.

Problem is that that parent and youth sport industry driven programing doesn't make space this sort of thing.
Yeah, we used to just play catch for hours, pretending to be Luis Tiant or Bob Gibson, or we would just stand in the yard and swing the bat and pretend to be Yaz or Rico. It built up arm strength and coordination. When I watch my kids' games now, it's obvious that although the coaches do a great job in helping them be better players, the kids just aren't "fluid", for the lack of a better term. Their motions just aren't second nature.

I don't think kids today have the patience to play catch for a couple hours, plus they have many other options (video games, rec centers, day camps, whatever). And that's a huge detriment when it comes to baseball, because there really aren't any shortcuts: you have to suck at it for quite a while before you're good at it. With basketball, a kid can at least go out and shoot hoops by himself and have fun, even the first time he does it.
 

Marbleheader

Moderator
Moderator
SoSH Member
Sep 27, 2004
11,726
I'm amazed at what raging over competitive assholes many of the little league coaches are. Guys screaming at 8 year olds, chewing out 15 year old umpires, getting into heated arguments with opposing coaches. That's enough to turn kids (and parents) away.
 

threecy

Cosbologist
SoSH Member
Sep 1, 2006
1,587
Tamworth, NH
I think video games are a convenient scapegoat, but I don't know if that's the cause, considering baseball was still very popular throughout the rise of Nintendo/Sega/et al.  If anything, for some of us, we'd play baseball video games when we couldn't be outside playing.
 
I think the advent of mass-viewing options on television and other digital venues has hurt.  Whereas families only had a few stations to choose from and would tend to watch programming together (such as baseball), it's obviously not the case anymore.
 
More than that, I think the mass-commercialization of baseball, as well as the aiming more for adults than kids, has hurt a lot.  If you watch a Red Sox game nowadays, it's a nonstop commercial with occasional baseball clips in between.  There are a million and one different pieces and variations of apparel to buy.  Tickets are super expensive and hard to acquire as compared to decades ago.
 
I also think the baseball card industry messed up big time when all sorts of brands and variations popped up, jacked up prices, and took out things like gum and puzzle pieces (neither of which were particularly good, but nonetheless who didn't like getting a 'prize'?)
 
The declining popularity of baseball with kids reminds me a bit of what's going on with McDonalds today, now that I think of it.
 

Wingack

Yankee Mod
Moderator
SoSH Member
Jul 14, 2005
34,363
In The Quivering Forest
Is the interest in baseball among kids really all that different than it was in the 90's though? When I was a kid I don't recall neighborhood kids getting stickball games together very much. Maybe they just didn't invite me.
 
It comes down probably to kids simply having more options nowadays overall. Back in the 50s and 60s it was play baseball or crack open the fire hydrant and dance around in the water.
 
I just can't ever get worried about these decline of baseball articles, they have literally been around since the year 1900.
 

Montana Fan

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 18, 2000
8,880
Twin Bridges, Mt.
Gagliano said:
Yeah, we used to just play catch for hours, pretending to be Luis Tiant or Bob Gibson, or we would just stand in the yard and swing the bat and pretend to be Yaz or Rico. It built up arm strength and coordination. When I watch my kids' games now, it's obvious that although the coaches do a great job in helping them be better players, the kids just aren't "fluid", for the lack of a better term. Their motions just aren't second nature.

I don't think kids today have the patience to play catch for a couple hours, plus they have many other options (video games, rec centers, day camps, whatever). And that's a huge detriment when it comes to baseball, because there really aren't any shortcuts: you have to suck at it for quite a while before you're good at it. With basketball, a kid can at least go out and shoot hoops by himself and have fun, even the first time he does it.
 
Christ I loved playing "over the wires" or "hit the bat". 
 
My nephew played baseball for 3-4 years in NH.  Now at 14 he competes in video game competitions at places like Mohegan Sun.  He's also on a Robot team that's "coached" by two MIT professors.  And he doesn't play baseball any more.  He's a smart kid that also does Karate class 3 days a week.  However, his unstructured time is exclusively spent in front of a computer.  So in a nutshell, I blame electronics for a lot of the change we see in the next generation.  Change that may not be bad outside the scope of participation in baseball but that's a little over my paygrade.
 

Gagliano

Ask me about my mollusks
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Sep 19, 2001
5,812
Maine
threecy said:
I think video games are a convenient scapegoat, but I don't know if that's the cause, considering baseball was still very popular throughout the rise of Nintendo/Sega/et al.
There is a big difference now though- portability. With smart phones, they literally can have internet and games with them 24/7. They have their faces planted in them for hours (and to be honest, adults are just as bad). I can't imagine many kids having the patience to play catch for an hour without checking his text messages.
 

dynomite

Member
SoSH Member
Wingack said:
I just can't ever get worried about these decline of baseball articles, they have literally been around since the year 1900.
Exactly correct.

“Baseball, we fear, is going the way of the horse and mustache cup.”
That quote is from 1955. Here are some others: http://www.foxsports.com/buzzer/story/baseball-is-dying-proclamations-031215

Not saying people in this thread are saying so, but the general perception that baseball is dying and kids have lost interest is nonsense. MLB is as profitable and healthy as ever (or at least as could be hoped). The league made $9 billion last season, nearly double NBA and triple NHL revenue, and attendance was over 75 million (!!!!) in total.

The market and landscape has changed, but baseball is doing just fine.
 

Gagliano

Ask me about my mollusks
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Sep 19, 2001
5,812
Maine
dynomite said:
Exactly correct.

That quote is from 1955. Here are some others: http://www.foxsports.com/buzzer/story/baseball-is-dying-proclamations-031215

Not saying people in this thread are saying so, but the general perception that baseball is dying and kids have lost interest is nonsense. MLB is as profitable and healthy as ever (or at least as could be hoped). The league made $9 billion last season, nearly double NBA and triple NHL revenue, and attendance was over 75 million (!!!!) in total.

The market and landscape has changed, but baseball is doing just fine.
The fan base is aging. Twenty years ago in my town, thirty kids would show up to try out for 14 spots on the LL team. The last few years, eleven or twelve showed up and everyone made the team. Some surrounding towns even used to have two teams, and now some towns had to merge to even get one team combined.

I agree MLB is making more money than ever before, but that isn't the question at hand. The question is whether it is losing the kids' attention.
 

Fishercat

Svelte and sexy!
SoSH Member
May 18, 2007
8,266
Manchester, N.H.
Is  youth participation declining in baseball and sport in general is actually going to result or attention in the game itself? Youth football saw a 4% drop, and despite all of the NFL's warts, the league is still exceptionally popular. Dynomite brings up a good point that the sports are still popular despite this declining childhood interest.
 
Could it just be that the means in which people appreciate and follow sports are changing and that youth participation in sport simply isn't as essential to loving a sport as it used to be?
 
In addition to the usual reasons given (technology, increasing options), there ways people follow and appreciate sport are dramatically different in importance. In the 1980's, you had live games, radio broadcasts, limited television broadcasts, a small subset of games (early baseball video games, Strat-O-Matic, etc.), very early fantasy baseball leagues, card collecting, etc.
 
In 2015, you have a lot of the same things, but things like fantasy baseball/football, statistical analysis, video clips and packages, hyper-detailed and realistic video games, etc. have grown in prominence and accessability and given kids who may normally play the game for a few years and be terrible at it a different outlet for their interest in baseball or football. Maybe the unathletic 12 year old quits when he exits Little League, but then takes up an OOTP League, or plays Fantasy Baseball with his family or friends, or follows the sport on Reddit, etc.
 
From the point of view of the unathletic child who quit sports early, I had a lot of fun when I got to play in Little League, but I didn't really get to play much and it became a lot more fun for me to embrace baseball while not actually playing baseball.
 

threecy

Cosbologist
SoSH Member
Sep 1, 2006
1,587
Tamworth, NH
Wingack said:
Is the interest in baseball among kids really all that different than it was in the 90's though? When I was a kid I don't recall neighborhood kids getting stickball games together very much. Maybe they just didn't invite me.
I think it was probably stronger before the 1994 strike.  From my clouded memory, I seem to remember basketball becoming much cooler than baseball at my school around that time.  SSS of course.
 

twothousandone

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Jan 18, 2001
3,976
Montana Fan said:
Christ I loved playing "over the wires" or "hit the bat".
That's hit a fungoe, and unless someong catches it on a fly, they have to throw it back and hit the bat lying on the ground? Don't hit the bat, same kids hits again? Hit the bat, you're up?

I used to love that game -- taught us to catch fly balls, scoop up grounders. Taught us to throw on a line. And taught us to stand around waiting for serendipity to send the ball in our direction. Which is a bit of the yin and yang. As Nip says above, if a coach at practice can't keep kids from standing around waiting for their turn, that coach needs help. But, when it's kids being kids, there's a lot of standing around. The former is bad, the latter is good.
 

Hagios

New Member
Dec 15, 2007
672
AlNipper49 said:
 
This is exactly the issue.  We'd go to practice and my son would basically stand in fucking line waiting to take a single grounder then move to the back. 
 
That was my experience with T-Ball too. It's a total joke and the kids don't learn anything except what their dads teach them on their own time. And I'm not one of those superdads who spends hours playing catch with their son. On Saturday afternoon while the burgers are cooking, sure, but I don't want to be my son's coach. So we never did T-Ball again.
 

iayork

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 6, 2006
639
I think a part of the problem -- if it is a problem, which I'm not convinced of -- is travel ball.  
 
My kids have played baseball, the older one since he was two and spent all his time dragging me to the back yard to pitch to his giant plastic bat, followed by T ball, coach pitch, machine pitch, kid pitch from 44', 48', 54', and 60'6", middle-school team, high-school team, and his present 14U travel ball.  The younger played through his tenth year, then chose soccer instead (he wanted to play both but it isn't physically possible).  So we've seen lots of rec leagues.  
 
Much of what people complain about here, I haven't seen.  The parents I've seen have almost all been great, enthusiastic but not overbearing.  (Compare and contrast: Soccer dads.  What a bunch of assholes.)   Coaches, up to middle school, anyway, have emphasized fun over winning, and I've not seen any yelling at kids or trying to humiliate or abuse them.  Practices have had plenty of play time, not all that much boring repetition, generally age-appropriate teaching.  And there have been lots of after-game pizza parties, season-ending parties, just plenty of fun.
 
The thing, though, is that travel ball is becoming more and more a thing, and it's leading to complete separation of two tiers.  The better kids tend to play travel ball, so the rec leagues have the worse kids, and unless you play with and against the better kids, it's hard to get better yourself.  And with travel ball kicking in at 6 or 8 years old, you end up with two cultures of baseball kids, the good and the less good, and it's really hard to haul yourself out of the rec league level and into the travel level. It's not impossible (we started travel when he was 13) but it's much harder than if you've just played with the same group of travel-ball kids since you were 8.. 
 
Rec league really dies off for teenagers.  There are plenty of opportunities for younger kids to go and play for fun, but for a 14-year-old, there's much less, and for 15 and up there's very little recreational baseball.  The expectation is that kids of that age will be playing high school ball and travel ball and won't have time for rec league, so the lower performers, who might be happy to keep playing for fun, don't have that chance and just drop out.

 
Does that mean that you're just losing the mediocre kids anyway?  Not necessarily.  Travel ball is far more expensive and time-consuming than rec league.  You have to be pretty devoted, both kid and parents, to commit to it.  (We've played tournaments for the last four weekends, have this one off, and then we're playing ten consecutive weekends.)  If you're the parent of an 8-year-old who enjoys the game but isn't fanatical about it, or if you're a family without the spare time to commit to it, the kid is likely to stay in rec league, and then, again, it's hard to lift them out of that level once they're in it, playing with the other rec-leaguers, even if they have far more potential than some of the travel ball kids.
 
Travel ball is big business.  I don't know anything about the history or economics of it, but it's obvious as we travel to brand-new parks, built in the past few years solely to cater to travel-ball tournaments. Every weekend of the summer these parks, which may not even have a home team, host a new tournament, with maybe 40 teams playing, each of which pays maybe $400 for the privilege (plus the concession stand, plus minor parking fees and the like).  This is a big money-maker, and it's a snowball effect.  The more travel teams, the more parks you need, the more parks there are, the more tournaments there are, and the more travel teams you need to fill the tournaments.  
 
I'm not hostile to travel ball.  My kid is having fun with it, and he's learning, the coaches are decent to very good, and so on.  On the rare weekends when we don't play or practice, it's common for a group of the kids to get together to just scrimmage and goof around at the park; they have fun with the game.  It's a good experience.  
 
But it would have also been nice if he could have stuck with rec league and played with other kids his caliber, instead of having to move on for a decent challenge.  
 
Our local rec league sponsors the travel teams, and I know there was significant angst among the board of the rec league as they introduced and expanded the travel program, for exactly these reasons -- the concern over diluting the rec level, and creating two groups of players at an early age. But they felt they had to do it.  
 
Look to the expansion of the travel team culture when it comes to losing kids from baseball.
 

Montana Fan

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 18, 2000
8,880
Twin Bridges, Mt.
twothousandone said:
That's hit a fungoe, and unless someong catches it on a fly, they have to throw it back and hit the bat lying on the ground? Don't hit the bat, same kids hits again? Hit the bat, you're up?

I used to love that game -- taught us to catch fly balls, scoop up grounders. Taught us to throw on a line. And taught us to stand around waiting for serendipity to send the ball in our direction. Which is a bit of the yin and yang. As Nip says above, if a coach at practice can't keep kids from standing around waiting for their turn, that coach needs help. But, when it's kids being kids, there's a lot of standing around. The former is bad, the latter is good.
 
Yessir, same game.  The nice thing about "hit the bat" and "over the wires" was they only took two kids to play.
 

Infield Infidel

teaching korea american
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
11,463
Meeting Place, Canada
In Korea my school had a long school day, like 12-14 hours, but some of the breaks were 20 minutes. Each homeroom had a bat and a soccer ball. Kids would either kick a soccer ball around playing one bounce, or three kids, batter, pitcher, fielder, would throw a baseball around. During lunch and dinner they would scarf food in no time and go out and play. At lunch there were usually at least 5 groups of kids playing.
 

DJnVa

Dorito Dawg
SoSH Member
Dec 16, 2010
53,841
iayork said:
.  The parents I've seen have almost all been great, enthusiastic but not overbearing.  (Compare and contrast: Soccer dads.  What a bunch of assholes.)  
 
Come on, unless there's something that pushes assholes to push their kids towards soccer, this isn't the case.
 
There are assholes and great parents in every sport.
 

iayork

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 6, 2006
639
DrewDawg said:
 
Come on, unless there's something that pushes assholes to push their kids towards soccer, this isn't the case.
 
There are assholes and great parents in every sport.
Sure, this is just my experience, not a randomized survey.  All I know is that every single time I take my kid to a soccer game, there are one or two dads who spend the game screaming at their kids and the refs, while I've seen maybe one or two instances of that in a far greater sample of baseball games.
 

bosoxsue

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Aug 16, 2001
1,774
Gagliano said:
There is a big difference now though- portability. With smart phones, they literally can have internet and games with them 24/7. They have their faces planted in them for hours (and to be honest, adults are just as bad). I can't imagine many kids having the patience to play catch for an hour without checking his text messages.
 
My son is 10 and he loves the screen entertainment -- Xbox, Wii, apps for the iPad, 3DS. However, he drops that in a second if someone wants to go out for a catch, and he plays on a Little League team. We're not in a neighborhood, so it has to be an adult initiating this or him getting an adult or sibling to agree. Anyway, he asked me the other day if he could play Little League *and* lacrosse next spring. I told him he would have to choose one. I think that for his friends, it is the constant go-go-go of screen entertainment that makes lacrosse more appealing. They're wired differently, and the standing around part of baseball turns off a lot of them. Strictly anecdotal, but that is the feedback I've gotten for the appeal of lacrosse. 
 

Kliq

Member
SoSH Member
Mar 31, 2013
22,671
If youth sports is down across the board, wouldn't a logical reason be the increased specialization of kids in one particular sport? For most of you (I'm assuming, I'm a youngster) you might have played Baseball in the spring/summer, football or soccer in the fall, basketball or hockey in the winter. Now if you like basketball, it can be a year round thing with leagues going on during all four seasons. If you have money, maybe your kid plays in a local league one season, a travel league the next, and maybe AAU or hell, I've seen plenty of kids with private coaches. In a lot of ways, sports have become much less seasonal, therefore kids can play one sport year-round instead of playing three different sports over the course of a year. It isn't even really a money thing either, I played Little League, Soccer and Pop Warner growing up, but I always liked playing basketball the best. When I got to 5th grade, the Boys and Girls Club in my city offered three basketball leagues, one in the winter, one in the spring and one in the summer. It wasn't that I didn't like playing the other sports, it was just that I preferred to play basketball over everything else.
 
While Little League numbers are down, kids could still be playing games of catch in their backyard all the time, that is a hard-to-prove statistic. When I was younger, me and a friend invented a game where you would throw the ball to each other and intentionally try and make diving catches. The person who threw the ball would grade the other person's catch on a scale of 4. A bad error was called a "Jeremy Giambi" an average catch was a "Barry Bonds" a good catch was "Ichiro" and a great catch was "Torii Hunter" (this was back in the early-mid-2000s when Hunter was on Sportscenter every day for robbing some jabroni of a home run). Neither me or my friend effected the Little League participation numbers, but it wasn't like we didn't care about baseball.
 

Dehere

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 25, 2010
3,143
A couple years ago I saw a survey indicating that participation in traditional team sports was down across the board, but that interestingly participation was way up in distance running and yoga. The implication seemed to be that a number of kids were participating in these activities with their parents.

That was probably five years ago. Not sure if that trend still holds up. While I'm a little bummed to see the sports of my youth in decline it wouldn't be all bad to know that some of it is kids engaging in activities with their parents that they can continue to enjoy long into adulthood.
 

iayork

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 6, 2006
639
I should have read the article more carefully instead of skimming.  They also point to travel ball as a culprit:
 
While neighborhood games become increasingly scarce, year-round travel teams have never been more prevalent. The U.S. Specialty Sports Association, the dominant organizing body for travel baseball, said it has around 1.3 million players spread across 80,000 teams, more than double what it had 10 years ago. The company’s website includes national rankings for teams in age groups that begin at “4 and under.” ... But the cost of that lifestyle—thousands of dollars a year in many cases—puts it out of reach for many parents. It skews heavily white: A 15-year study of travel teams by Nebraska researcher David Ogden found that only 3% of players are black. And its popularity has made baseball more of a niche sport, precisely what MLB wants to avoid at the spectator level.
 
 
 
 
They don't mention the economics of travel ball (for hosting parks and for the overarching organizations), but I'd be interested in seeing some work on that. It seems like the whole for-profit travel tournament thing, which I think is fairly new, may be problematic.
 

lexrageorge

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 31, 2007
18,099
Anecdotal story coming up, but one that's similar to others I've heard.
 
When my son was doing rec league baseball, he enjoyed it until they got to the point where they went full time player pitch (as opposed to coaches pitching after the first 5 pitches per batter).  The team had around 15-18 players or so, and they used a rotating batting order.  Which means that the player who made last out in the prior game would bat last in the next game.  They had similar rules for substitutions.  Players that started one game on the bench would be automatically allowed to start the next game in the field.  
 
Supposedly.  Turns out the coaches of my son's team ignored the rules in order to get the kids geared for travel team the following season the most at bats and the most playing time in the field.  The head coach was also the league coordinator, so this wasn't a case of a coach going rogue.  Remember, these kids were 8, not 18.  By the midway through the season my son, who was obviously not one of the targeted travel players, was ready to quit.  I made him stick out the season, but there was no way I was going to sign him up for another year of baseball.  He's had no interest since in picking up a ball or glove or bat; can't blame him either.  He's much happier in soccer and hockey.  
 
The other problem is that players get better through practice; practices in this league were non-existent.  Batting cage time was reserved for the chosen as well.  
 
So, I cannot say I'm surprised that participation in baseball youth leagues has declined so dramatically  The WSJ article did mention the problems facing poorer towns where many kids are unable to afford travel ball.  The idea of "baseball for fun" is anathema to most parents, which is a shame. 
 
And the ranking of "4 and under" teams is totally absurd and pointless. But the supply exists because the demand for such rankings exist, and it's not the 4 year old kids that are demanding those rankings.  
 

h8mfy

New Member
Jul 15, 2005
336
Orange County, CA
"A pervasive emphasis on performance over mere fun and exercise has driven many children to focus exclusively on one sport from an early age, making it harder for all sports to attract casual participants."
 
Between that and the reality that kids don't do anything that is not organized any more, and this is the fallout.
 
I can't recall seeing a bunch of elementary school age kids organizing a game on their own and just playing - whether it was 3-4 guys with "pitchers mound poison" and right field foul, or the rare occasion when we managed to get 18 kids - spanning many ages - at once and had a "real" game.  This is true of most sports today - maybe they'll play briefly at school, but they aren't allowed to come home, drop books, and head to a park to meet up for a game.  The one parent who might allow it would get CPS on them, and their kid would be pretty lonely.
 
When I was a kid in the 70s, my town-run "little league" (not affiliated, we could never get to Williamsport) did not even start until 5th grade.  So those games I described above were often broken up so we could go play little league.  But by then, we had mastered enough skills (I've read that hand-eye does not develop sufficiently to safely play until about 8) to really enjoy having umps and bases and lines, even if we were just in jeans and t-shirts (that matched our teammates).  I would be very surprised if the HS coach knew much about these games - in fact, the league extended into HS age, so kids could keep playing if they didn't make the freshman team, and some made the jump later.
 
Add in the emphasis on competition and pre-ordination of the team and the problem gets worse.  My son was a decent ballplayer back in NY, and he enjoyed it.  We moved to CA just before 6th grade and he started here in a town that has two little leagues - lots of players.  It was clear from the start that he was not going to get any PT, since the coaches didn't know him (or me, likely a worse problem) and weren't spending time on him, He lasted another season watching bad but well-connected players get chance after chance before giving up completely.  He liked hoops, too - but never got to play for his grade-school teams because their volunteer coach had preselected the boys he wanted his son to play with (no, that son did not end up with a D1 scholarship).  Thank goodness there was no such network in lacrosse, and he started 4 years on his merits.
 
As an active parent volunteer now, I think it is crazy to have them start so young - many burn out, and none learn the life skills needed to organize a game, make up new rules for the circumstances, arbitrate disputes, etc.  Not to mention the kids who give up before a major growth spurt, or never find their real athletic calling.
 
My son took up crew at college - the biggest thrill of my sports parent life was watching him win a race recently.
 
He'll watch baseball - with me, but never by himself.
 

Strike4

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
3,896
Portland, Maine
One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is the growth of other activities offered by towns and schools.  Only when I was a kid (late 80's to mid 90's) did lacrosse really come into prominence and I grew up in a Boston suburb where lacrosse quickly came to dominate spring sports.  Even then it was only in high school.  My town didn't have a Pop Warner football team, either (it does now).  I had to play for the neighboring town.
 
There were kids of all abilities on my town baseball and basketball teams, probably because there just wasn't a whole lot being offered for kids activities, and that's not the case now.  When I see what is being offered now - not just by town recreation departments but in schools - I'm totally blown away.  I read that P&G thread about people with terrible teenagers I'm like, "man, they have robotics teams now".  
 
So maybe it's just that kids have more to choose from these days, which is not really a bad thing.  This might leave baseball as the odd man out more than in the past, because that kid who used to suck at baseball can now choose something more to his liking, like robotics or tennis or sailing.  It also means there's a corresponding diminishment of "free time" where kids just gravitate to the local playing field and have a pickup game of whatever was in season - baseball, football, basketball or rock fights.  I am lucky to live in a place where there can be a lot of unsupervised playing time and kids can roam around on bikes and whack each other with sticks at a local park.  But I think it's a no-brainer if you are a parent in NYC, for example, and the choice is between either a) filling your kid's free time with myriad wonderful-seeming activities with other children; or b) send them out for some unstructured playing time at the risk of your kid being the only kid out there because nobody else does that.
 

Kenny F'ing Powers

posts way less than 18% useful shit
SoSH Member
Nov 17, 2010
14,426
Hagios said:
 
That was my experience with T-Ball too. It's a total joke and the kids don't learn anything except what their dads teach them on their own time. And I'm not one of those superdads who spends hours playing catch with their son. On Saturday afternoon while the burgers are cooking, sure, but I don't want to be my son's coach. So we never did T-Ball again.
I don't blame you. Who wants to teach their kid anything? Especially on the weekend!
 

Lose Remerswaal

Experiencing Furry Panic
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
lexrageorge said:
Anecdotal story coming up, but one that's similar to others I've heard.
 
When my son was doing rec league baseball, he enjoyed it until they got to the point where they went full time player pitch (as opposed to coaches pitching after the first 5 pitches per batter).  The team had around 15-18 players or so, and they used a rotating batting order.  Which means that the player who made last out in the prior game would bat last in the next game.  They had similar rules for substitutions.  Players that started one game on the bench would be automatically allowed to start the next game in the field.  
 
Supposedly.  Turns out the coaches of my son's team ignored the rules in order to get the kids geared for travel team the following season the most at bats and the most playing time in the field.  The head coach was also the league coordinator, so this wasn't a case of a coach going rogue.  Remember, these kids were 8, not 18.  By the midway through the season my son, who was obviously not one of the targeted travel players, was ready to quit.  I made him stick out the season, but there was no way I was going to sign him up for another year of baseball.  He's had no interest since in picking up a ball or glove or bat; can't blame him either.  He's much happier in soccer and hockey.  
 
The other problem is that players get better through practice; practices in this league were non-existent.  Batting cage time was reserved for the chosen as well.  
 
So, I cannot say I'm surprised that participation in baseball youth leagues has declined so dramatically  The WSJ article did mention the problems facing poorer towns where many kids are unable to afford travel ball.  The idea of "baseball for fun" is anathema to most parents, which is a shame. 
 
And the ranking of "4 and under" teams is totally absurd and pointless. But the supply exists because the demand for such rankings exist, and it's not the 4 year old kids that are demanding those rankings.  
 
So your kid had a bad little league coach.  There are bad soccer coaches, bad basketball coaches, bad hockey coaches, etc, etc, etc.
 

Fred not Lynn

Dick Button Jr.
SoSH Member
Jul 13, 2005
5,253
Alberta
lexrageorge said:
Anecdotal story coming up, but one that's similar to others I've heard.
 
When my son was doing rec league baseball, he enjoyed it until they got to the point where they went full time player pitch (as opposed to coaches pitching after the first 5 pitches per batter).  The team had around 15-18 players or so, and they used a rotating batting order.
 
Supposedly.  Turns out the coaches of my son's team ignored the rules in order to get the kids geared for travel team the following season the most at bats and the most playing time in the field.  The head coach was also the league coordinator, so this wasn't a case of a coach going rogue.  Remember, these kids were 8, not 18.  
EIGHTEEN kids on a 8 year-olds baseball team? That's just incompetent organizing.
 

crystalline

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 12, 2009
5,771
JP
dynomite said:
That quote is from 1955. Here are some others: http://www.foxsports.com/buzzer/story/baseball-is-dying-proclamations-031215

Not saying people in this thread are saying so, but the general perception that baseball is dying and kids have lost interest is nonsense.

The market and landscape has changed, but baseball is doing just fine.
People were predicting that boxing and horse racing were dying back then, too -- and they were right.

Forms of entertainment rise and fall over time. Ballet, opera, and classical music used to be more popular too. The decline in youth participation, and the aging of the baseball fan population, are both already hurting MLB ratings, which will drive decreases in profit.

It could be that 30 years from now people are watching lacrosse and soccer, but equally it could be that more people are playing and watching American Gladiators in virtual reality, participating via suits you wear that allow you to control the characters. Entertainment will change, and I suspect baseball's lack of grassroots drive will cause decline.

Iayork and others did a great job dissecting the landscape for kids sports. My uncles, growing up in the 40s and 50s, would spend their free time on a sandlot playing ball- pretty much only baseball from the stories they tell. Fishercat hit on a key point- if lots of kids play, many will drop out even after little league but will be interested in watching later in life. We can't predict 30 years from now what will happen but my gut is that the decreases in the number of kids playing baseball today, which everyone agrees on, will drive much less interest in baseball in the future.



Baseball ratings are declining:
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-08-15/new-baseball-commissioner-rob-manfreds-task-managing-decline
http://m.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/14/while-mlb-all-star-game-ratings-decline-sponsorshi
 

JimD

Member
SoSH Member
Nov 29, 2001
8,681
I have to think that all sports are in uncharted waters right now, thanks to the explosive rise in the availability and use of sophisticated electronic entertainment.   If we had those devices when I was a kid, I never would have left the house either. 
 
My daughter played organized softball all the way up to her freshman year in high school and I coached for a few years.  We didn’t have any horrible experiences with other coaches or league administrators, but there was a certain degree of favoritism and politics that was directly related to the local travel team in terms of playing time and all-star selection.  She was a decent hitter and became a pretty good defensive catcher (one of the umps once told me she was one of the best he’d seen in blocking the ball and keeping pitches in front of her) but got moved off the position in favor of the travel team catcher because that girl needed the defensive reps.  I get that the other girl probably had the greater potential, but try explaining that to a kid who does everything they’re asked but still gets benched.  It just felt like the system is geared way too early to give the rewards to the chosen few, but maybe our experience wasn’t typical of all communities.
 

catomatic

thinks gen turgidson is super mean!!!
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
3,392
Park Slope, Brooklyn
My son's PeeWee league is fine, I think it's deepening his already strong interest in the game but, every time I encounter a World Series or LCS game starting at 9:00pm or whatever, I think that the golden goose is being slowly cooked by short-term thinking. Those games have the sport's biggest appeal and they are put out of reach of the most impressionable future baseball players/fans among us. And video games. I blame video games a lot. My son's time with a gaming device in his hand will be regulated in Sharia-like fashion. I'm happy to be the bogeyman if it gets him outside on a clear, sunny day instead of stagnating in some virtual, pixelated world. I digress.
 

catomatic

thinks gen turgidson is super mean!!!
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
3,392
Park Slope, Brooklyn
HriniakPosterChild said:
That goose went into the oven in 1988.
 
And those of us who live (and especially those who work) in the Pacific Time zone appreciate that the games start when they do.
27 years? Seems about the right amount of time for the generational shift we're talking about.
 

Fred not Lynn

Dick Button Jr.
SoSH Member
Jul 13, 2005
5,253
Alberta
Every once in a while, for a pretty cool special event, I think it's OK for a 9 year old to stay up past his or her bedtime. I'm pretty sure it's not going to stunt anyone's growth.
 

Fred not Lynn

Dick Button Jr.
SoSH Member
Jul 13, 2005
5,253
Alberta
...and here's a BIG problem about baseball and youth engagement that we sort of overlooked; Half the kids out there are more or less excluded from any reasonably advanced baseball past the age of 12, especially now that there's such emphasis on performance and advancement. Anyone want to guess who they are?
 

Spacemans Bong

chapeau rose
SoSH Member
Fred not Lynn said:
Every once in a while, for a pretty cool special event, I think it's OK for a 9 year old to stay up past his or her bedtime. I'm pretty sure it's not going to stunt anyone's growth.
I'm pretty sure there was a "your memories of Game 6 of the 75 World Series" thread on here about ten years ago where several posters mentioned sneaking in radios to bed or just flat out not finding out the score until the next day.

Maybe kids and adults have just decided baseball is too stupid and the sport is entering an inexorable decline. Maybe. But I will point out two things about that:

1) wgas? MLB ain't going anywhere. No club is going to fold, at best, until we're all dead anyway.

2) the foundation of the vast majority of these arguments is still context-free discussions of youth sports participation and World Series TV ratings. The sport still has immense strengths at the local level. People still love going to the ballpark and watching their team on TV. If the cable pyramid blows up MLB is, by far, the best placed to deal with that given the behemoth that is MLBAM. Baseball still pays better than any other sport (and way better than freaking lacrosse or rugby) and it will draw great talent based on that.

The sport's going to be fine. It will be different 30 years from now, just as it was different 30 years ago. It is extremely likely that it will be very healthy when we are old men and our grandkids are telling us baseball is boring and korfball is where it's at, because our kids said the same thing and they ended up loving baseball.
 

Fred not Lynn

Dick Button Jr.
SoSH Member
Jul 13, 2005
5,253
Alberta
Since no one wanted to guess, the half of kids who aren't really drawn to baseball because there's no real ongoing path to participation past puberty....is, girls. That's a big problem, when your sport pretty much eliminates 50% of the population.