What are the best things I can do as a parent to encourage my son’s interest in baseball?

Have fun with it! Come up with fun games to work on youth baseball skills development rather than just running through baseball drills.

Also, keep in mind that youth baseball and youth softball are very difficult sports to play. A Hall of Famer from the Big Leagues gets 3 hits in 10 at-bats. What other sport can be successfully played with a 70% failure ratio???!!!

Posted by Duke Baxter at 08:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

What are your thoughts on the right age for a child to be part of a travel baseball team?

I don’t have children old enough to play travel ball, so that is a hard question for me to answer.

Looking at as many ball players that I see, however, I would say that the age of 10 is a good age for travel ball. It also depends what you mean by travel ball--there are so many different types of travel teams. Some play year-round, while some play 9 months out of the year.

I have always said this: For a player to become a better athlete you should play different sports to work on different types of agility and body movements that are specific to that sport. For example, basketball requires a lot of jumping, side-to-side agility and endurance that is great for baseball players.

Posted by Duke Baxter at 09:50 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)