re: Who actually likes “travel ball”

This is going to get buried in this long arse thread but here’s what we’re currently dealing with in my town:

There used to be a private “Dixie” spring baseball league then city recreation in the summer. Dixie would have all stars and those teams would play a few tournaments and that was that.

Fast forward to today and Dixie has dissolved as well as another babe Ruth start up league. So now we’re left with travel and Rec.

Unfortunately Rec has devolved into almost babysitting. I coach and out my kids in it to try to walk the walk but half the team is ok and half doesn’t know how to put in a glove (I’m lucky if they show up with a glove). Then this year they cut the number of Rec games almost in half. So even if a kid likes it, they will get 7 games. On top of all of this, the city has turfed several fields in one of the parks. It’s great. But guess who uses them 95% of the time: travel ball for practice and weekend tournaments. What sense does that make.

My boys also play on travel teams because I want the to play more than 7 games. I’m not in any way thinking they will play in high school, I just want them to have fun play more and have fun. But what sucks is there’s so many travel teams in my area, they’re all watered down and other than a one or two, the rest go out to these tournaments and just get beat down. 75% of this kids should be playing some sort of league ball and being done with it. My kids would do only league if it was viable. But nobody wants to do that, everybody wants to travel to Hammond or Broussard or Baton Rouge to get their asses beat.