Congrats, Reader. Is the state of Illinois going to let another good player get away?

90-95% of "travel" teams are a joke. There are six teams that have formed their (our) own league to regularly play each other, because the overwhelming majority of the other 70-80 area teams are not worth the time for our kids getting dressed to play. When my son's group was 12-14 and playing 75-100 games a year no hitters and 4 inning mercy rule games were the norm. Thankfully by the time high school starts the elite travel teams don't bother even scheduling those teams.

It's a rarity that those 70-80 teams actually hit more than 3-4 line drives out of the infield if one of our actual pitchers pitch.

It IS funny though to see all the "travel" teams stocked with kids swinging $450 DeMarini CF6s and playing with $300 Wilson A2Ks....or the personalized gloves . Then playing in error-fests while their parents hurriedly take pictures/video for the college scouting "services" websites.

I'll leave the "middle class" remarks alone though.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

signing my son up for modern dance ASAP.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I really don't know. Thanks to you & the others, but frankly he's a kid some have really just casually been looking at. The schools that really have shown the modest interest aren't in state.

All I've really told him is to be ready to pitch against Mt. Carmel, St. Rita, Nazareth & Simeon. He needs to go into the summer getting real consideration to be his "travel" team's 1-2 starter (despite not throwing 91-92....yet). He's thin (think Lincecum or Oil Can) and really didn't come into his own as a pitcher until the last 1-2 years. He kind of needs to earn some more love.

But he's a gamer & isn't afraid to go inside with his fastball. Oddly, he took more time off than usual this winter just conditioning and is now dying to play again. It's almost like he's back in 7th-8th grade.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Actually they look at his crazy father & little brother, then think of my oldest: "if he bulks up like his family...".

Plus my "crazy" outside the fences is limited to talking baseball with objective observers. I coached too long to sit with parents who don't understand what's really going on between the lines, or make remarks like: "my son is playing for himself" & then get upset when we've lost because their "playing for themselves" kids then didn't really play hard. But then the downside is that the people I sit around then figure where my son gets his nasty in game disposition from.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

OMG

Reader is guaranteeing his kid will win 2 Cy youngs or at the very least be a colorful drug abusing over .500 pitcher



kidding

I could accept it if they were a joke. They are more like a scam or Ponzi scheme, which is really the intent of my earlier posts

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Don't expect that shit to continue now that Ignatius is giving special consideration to athletes

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.