When I grew up, my brother, sister and I had the chance to play recreational sports in our town. There were no "travel" teams, per se, but there were "all star" teams that were developed each season that would travel to different tournaments once the regular season of the sport was done. As my son now begins his baseball season, I am reminded how much things change.
My oldest plays in the same recreational baseball league that my brother played in when we were young. The only difference is that my son also plays in a new part-time travel program sponsored by the rec-league. They participate in a Sunday league with other teams that are similar "all-star" rec-teams, specifically NOT full-time travel teams.
What amazed me this year is the number of full-time "travel" teams that our town now has. It appears that when a child doesn't make a travel team, no worries! Any dad who has a few other dad friends and some extra money can start his own travel baseball team! Hold tryouts, hope that players show up...gather friends of your child's to join the team...ask those parents to pay the big bucks travel baseball requires, which I'm told is now about $3,000 for our area teams, and you've got yourself a travel baseball team. It's official, you can now say that your son plays travel baseball!
Well...this past week our part-time rec-travel team had a scrimmage game against one of these new travel teams. Interestingly, we knew many of the kids and parents on the other team--who truly are very nice parents. A distinction was made, however, between our two teams. Their team IS a travel baseball team, for real. You know, they will "travel". I believe that distinction was made just in case we didn't quite understand what that was all about. By the end of the game, I was quite pleased with the fact that I will be "traveling" locally--furthest distance will be Indiana, I believe--and paying well under $1,000; after our part-time rec-travel team beat the REAL travel team 8-2...hmmmm...
And you know...our parents cheered for our players and for theirs, afterall, we knew most of them! The travel parents, as much as I really do like most of them, only cheered for their own (in real travel baseball, it's really competitive, I suppose). Our coaches were quite complimentary of all players, their coaches tended to ridicule players on slow running, getting out of the way of a pitch that hit a player, and missing a pop-up fly in the field. As it is only the beginning of April, I shudder at the fact that this will be a very long, very expensive season for those players and families...
But it is all for the kids, right?
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