TOO PRECIOUS TO PAY SOMEONE ELSE

In 1987, I brought “select” team baseball to Texas. My God, what have I wrought?
Saturday December 21, I accompanied my son, the pro ballplayer, to a tryout for
a “select” team. He was asked to act as a “grader”. I talked to the parents in
the stands. They told me their sons had all played over 100 games the last year.
They told me of tournaments in which they had played four games, back to back,
in one day. Each had their own private hitting coach and a private pitching
coach. Each had a batting cage in their backyard, pitching machine, and bullpen
with pitching mound and radar gun. One parent said he knew of parents that were
spending $30-40,000 a year on their son’s baseball! I went down into the dugout
and snooped though their bat bags. They each had at least one and sometimes two
$200+ pro line gloves, as many as three $250+ bats, several pairs of batting
gloves, turf shoes and spare cleats, eye black, ankle guards, wrist bands, warm
up jackets, underarmor, Oakley sunglasses, etc….. These ballplayer are 8 YEARS
OLD!!!!!!

The parents were crazed. After each drill, they would run down to the fence to
coach and give encouragement. The players were pretty good 8 year old players.
Big whoop! Five were trying out. Two were selected. The other three called that
evening inquiring if my son would be interested in giving private lessons to
their sons.

If the object is for your son to someday be awarded a college scholarship to
play baseball, 11.78 scholarships are divided between about 30 players. You will
be lucky to get $16,000 in four years toward the cost of college. If you think
that is a wise investment, I have some Enron stock I will sell you. Look in the
mirror. If neither you nor your wife were exceptional athletes, do you think
that you passed along the genes to allow your progeny to be a world class
athlete and play pro ball?

Fifteen years ago my son was 8 and a pretty good ballplayer. It seems like only
yesterday. It has gone by so fast. This period of time that we get to share this
baseball experience with our sons is too short and precious to share with an
expensive private lesson coach. YOU work with your son. You can do just as good
a job instructing a young ballplayer as that guy that you would pay $50-$100 an
hour. Get the FUNdamentals Of Hitting, FUNdamentals Of Pitching, or an of the
other videos in the BASEBALL SKILLS AND DRILLS video series and you will have
all the knowledge necessary to work with your son. Get some Pickleballs and you
can enjoy BP in your backyard with out a cage. Get the Backyard Baseball Drills
video and you will learn how to make baseball training tools for very little
cost. All these training aids are available at www.tipsfromthecoach.com for a
heck of a lot less than the cost of one private lesson.

I also got a call that night from a friend of mine, imploring me to coach a team
of 13 year olds. This is what’s called a “pay for play” team. Each time the team
got together to practice or play, they would pay me $10 each. Play a couple of
games and practice a couple of times and I could make $480 per week. What has
become of baseball?

Yours in Baseball
Bruce
THE COACH