We have this one kid in my younger son’s 12u year who is a total stud. Last year we were in the second round of our travel playoffs and he was pitching a gem. Around the fourth inning, the kid’s father shrugged and he sighed. I was standing next to him along the first baseline with some other dads and I asked what was wrong. The dad said that on the ride to the game his son expressed that he didn’t want to pitch in that travel game because he wanted to be able to pitch in the upcoming rec playoffs starting in a couple days.
The fathers around us guffawed.
“He wants to pitch for rec over travel?” one dad said as if it was most preposterous thing ever.
“That’s insane,” another dad said.
“Thank god you put your foot down,” a third dad said, gesturing to the scoreboard showing our team with a lead.
I wanted to cry, though, because there was something sweet and innocent about this great young player wanting to play with his friends in a rec league over the “prestige” of travel baseball. As the game went on and this kid’s pitch count rose, I felt even worse knowing that he wouldn’t be able to pitch in any of the rec playoff games (though I was happy I guess that my son’s rec team now had a better chance of winning the rec playoffs!).
I’m of two minds on this issue. On the one hand, I’m totally in the camp of the guffawing travel dads. In rec in my town you’re generally playing against kids who can’t play. And what does it mean to do well against hitters who can barely hold up their bats or pitchers who are lobbing the ball over the plate? I also want my kid to be able to play in high school and hopefully college and the only way he’s going to raise his game is by playing against top players in travel leagues.
On the other hand, we put so much pressure on our kids in the travel games that it’s no surprise rec games are more fun. Rec right now is the closest thing our kids have to sandlot play. And who am I to tell my son he can’t have fun playing baseball?
But rec baseball is carefree and fun for kids, I’ve found that some rec coaches treat it as a matter of life and death, sometimes taking it even more seriously than we treat travel games. For example, my older son is currently playing both on a club team and a Babe Ruth rec team, and we’re running into the problem that always becomes a problem with baseball—pitching. He’s really the only kid who can pitch on the team. And when he pitches, we usually win. And when he doesn’t pitch, we usually lose. In a perfect world, overuse injuries wouldn’t be a concern and he could pitch for both teams but that’s not the world we live in.
After I held my son out from pitching in rec one week, the coach cornered me at the field and laid on a guilt trip thick about how I made a commitment to the team when I signed up and how it was unfair for me to hold out my son from pitching. He said that our team would have been in second place in the league and in a great spot for the playoffs if I had only let him pitch the last game. The coach was a strange guy who had a pest control business. He walked with a limp and mumbled a lot, but he seemed genuine, like a throwback coach from the 1980s.
“Is he being stupid?” my son asked when I told him what the coach had said.
“I wouldn’t say that,” I told him.
“I shouldn’t blow my arm out pitching for rec,” my son said, probably aping back to me something he’d heard me say.
I told my son that it was nice that the rec coach really cared about the team, and I also pointed out that the coach’s son wasn’t playing for a travel team so for that kid the rec team was the only baseball team he had. Plus, the coach’s son was going to age out of rec after this year, so this was likely his last year of organized baseball.
“So should I pitch for rec?” my son asked me.
“I don’t know,” I told him.
I came up with a compromise. My son could pitch for rec but he wouldn’t throw his hardest. He’d go about sixty percent. That way our team could win but my son wouldn’t be overtaxing his arm. Of course I didn’t spell out those rules to the rec coach. I just told him he could pitch that week.
On the day of the rec game, I told my son to throw strikes but not to throw his slider which could theoretically hurt his arm. I told him to try not to walk anyone. See if you can mow down the weaker hitters on three pitches, I told him. Go from the stretch even when nobody’s on base, I said, because my son needed some work on pitching from the stretch. I also told him to not get angry when his rec teammates made errors behind him, because our team couldn’t really field.
“Do you have that all?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said.
The first inning went as planned and he got three quick outs, though the count did go full to the second batter.
In the next inning, he started struggling to throw strikes. When my son pitches, he really guns the ball, and when he tries to take something off his pitches he often doesn’t get full arm extensions, leading to him missing high. That started happening. He threw two balls high to the first hitter, battled back to a 2-2 count, and then gave up a ground ball that the third baseman mishandled and there was a runner on first. My son walked the second kid. He got behind the third kid but struck him out. He gave up a ground ball hit to load the bases. A runner came home when the catcher misfired the ball back to my son, but he then got out of the inning giving up just that one run. My son was at 29 pitches.
In the third inning, the wheels fell off. My son kept getting behind hitters and then they hit him hard. A bullet over the left fielder’s head. Then a liner to right. A scorched single through the infield. It was abject torture watching my son getting torched by ungainly kids in ill-fitting rec jerseys. We were now down four runs and there was only one out. I shouted at my son to be better, and he looked back at me from the mound like he was about to cry. I slapped my hand on the chain link fence in frustration. I was so beside myself that I couldn’t keep a conversation going with the guy next to me. It was like I was in shock and couldn’t make out the words he was saying.
When the next batter got on, I flashed my son a thumbs up, the secret sign we had come up with before the game to mean that that he should tell the coach his arm was hurting and he needed to come out of the game. When he walked off the mound, I left the field and retreated to the parking lot, not wanting to even watch anymore. It was the worst I had felt during a game in a while.
An hour later my son opened the car door and dropped off his baseball bag in the back. He then sat down next to me in front.
“You told me not to throw my hardest,” he said.
I pulled out of the parking lot.
“You told me to not throw any sliders,” he said.
I navigated the surface streets.
“You told me to throw strikes,” he said. “I was throwing it right down the middle.”
“You were also missing high,” I said. “And I didn’t tell you to throw it right down the middle.”
“You told me to throw strikes. I only walked one kid.”
I nodded weakly.
“So you’re not angry?” he asked.
I realized I had no reason to be angry with him as he was just following my instructions, but I was also so incredibly pissed off. I was so done with rec. It just wasn’t worth it.
“My arm doesn’t hurt,” my son said, moving his arm around to test if there was any pain. “See, it doesn’t hurt.”
“Well there’s that,” I said.
The following day, the rec coach texted me and my wife saying the team was in a crisis and falling fast in the standings. He wanted to know if we knew of any “strong” pitchers who would be willing to join our team.
I responded that we didn’t.
For more Club Baseball Dad, see:
- Should You “Reclassify” Your Kid for High School Baseball?
- Are You On the Wrong Baseball Club Team? Maybe.
- I Spent 30K on Youth Baseball Last Year; Here’s How
- How to Deal with Bullies in Baseball
- Anger Management and Youth Baseball: How to Calm Down
- How to Manage Your Kid’s Baseball Tantrums and Meltdowns
- What’s Your Baseball End Game?
- How to Stop Being a Crazy Baseball Dad
- How to Be a Good Baseball Dad in the Backyard
- Is It Okay to Complain About Fielding Errors?
- Are Local Little Leagues Bad for Baseball?
For information on hitting, see:
- How to Get Out of a Hitting Slump
- 4 Best Baseball Batting Aids (No. 3 is Free)
- 4 Hitting Drills You Need to Do Before Every Game
- 4 Old School Baseball Drills You Need to Be Using
- 6 Mistakes to Avoid When Buying a Baseball Bat
For information on pitching, see:
- What You Need to Know About Little League Elbow
- 4 Ways To Increase Your Kid’s Pitching Velocity
- Is the Circle Change Dangerous for Youth Pitchers?
- Why I Don’t Let My Son Pitch in Little League
- How to Make Sure Your Kid Isn’t Overpitched in Basebal
For ways to get faster, see: