Just Baseball

Professional Baseball Stadium

The 'DREAM' most young baseball players have is to play in the Major Leagues - in huge stadiums with 40-50 THOUSAND fans watching them play.

The 'REALITY' is that most players will end up buying the tickets to watch the game, played by a very few 'professionals' that have the talent, the right attitude and the right breaks.

In the 972 area code - youth baseball is very intense, very competitive and very comparative. As young as 8 years old, players and teams are now being classified as A, AA, AAA or Majors - really! Even at 9 years can we really tell what level a team is. Each team will consist of players of various levels and if done right - players at this age will all be friends, go to the same school and possibly live in the same neighborhood.

When teams play - no matter what level - 8U, 12U, high school, college, minors, majors - there will be games where one team 'blows out' another team - and believe me . . . it is not fun for either team. Yeah the team winning is winning, but how fun can it be 'whooping' up on another team? Not much. As for the team being beat - no really fun either. However there will be days where you will be on one side or the other.

This past weekend, I watched teams at the 8U, 10U, 11U, 14U and high school - have football type scores to zero - and then . . . I watched teams go back and forth and back and forth with the winner being decided by one run. Obviously the tighter games were better to watch and a lot more interesting.

It is always good to have teams that are evenly matched play one another, however that is not always the case. Even when teams play each other year after year . . . the teams may start out evenly matched, then one team gets better . . . then the other team gets better . . . but from year to year the run margins in games will vary.

So just like the dream of playing in the big leagues to the reality of sitting in the stands . . . teams vs. teams - can be very close or by wide margins.

At the end of the day - it's just BASEBALL . . . a game to play, to forget about the 'real world' to escape . . . to relive childhood memories and remember to dream or to get out there and play and compete and focus on the . . . BASEBALL.