Time for Ball

Braden's first baseball game is tonight in Burleson. His team from the summer is back together, plus one new kid. So, I guess you might call it March Madness, or maybe spring madness! He will play on Tuesdays and Thursdays through the end of May. Thankfully it is not every single Tuesday and Thursday, but they make up for that by playing in 3 weekend tournaments!

When watching the boys practice, I was amazed at the physical progress each of them has made since the summer. Namely, coordination and speed. I started thinking about the book "Outliers," that I read earlier in the year. In the book, he was talking about how hockey players born in the first three months of the year are typically the most successful in getting to the NHL. What does birth month have to do with anything? Their cutoff date for age divisions is January 1. Huh? Let me talk in a more familiar sport....

Youth baseball's cutoff date is April 30. So, for Braden's league- if you are still 7 years old on April 30, you can play in that division. To his good fortune, he turns 8 only 3 weeks later, making him one of the oldest boys on the team. There are 3-4 other boys that turn 8 by August. I bet you $1 that you could go to that practice and guess which ones those are. The point of the author is not that those kids are always going to be better than the ones that don't turn 8 until February. It's the fact that in America, at this young age, those really good ones stick out. They are selected for this travel team. They get extra coaching. They play more games. They practice hundreds more hours than their peers in city league. By age 16, when it gets down to "real" performance time, they're just way more polished.

I'm not saying that Braden is going to play Major League Baseball because he was born in May. I'm just saying that he has a better chance than someone born later in the year because he gets plucked from the average pool earlier. Actually, my guess is that he will play baseball until football captures his heart! He loves football, but we are not letting him play until he is much older. Different game, different set of injuries, different set of skills! He's already chomping at the bit to play, but we keep telling him it's best to wait until he's 11 or 12 (he doesn't like that opinion).

Guess I got on a soap box when all I wanted to do was announce the beginning of Braden's spring baseball season!