I love baseball – everything about it.
As my wife snoozes on Sunday nights, I’m locked into whatever game is on ESPN. It doesn’t matter if it’s the hated St. Louis Cardinals playing, I’ll watch.
So, when Everett, my 5 year-old, asked me to play tee-ball several months ago, I almost cried in excitement.
I was so overjoyed, in fact, that I volunteered to coach his team despite our already overwhelmed, weekly schedule.
Finally, I thought, I have a ball player!
Now two months into our season with two games to play I can’t hide the truth that I’ve tried so desperately to suppress:
Tee-ball – the dummied-down, methodical game that introduces kids to baseball – SUCKS!
- Tee-Ball sucks because it’s mind-numbing-ly slow.
- Tee-Balls sucks because, really, there are two kids involved in each play – a batter and the pitcher.
- Tee-Ball sucks because, as a volunteer coach, I spend more time keeping Everett in “ready position” than cheering for him running the bases.
- Tee-Ball sucks because it tries to simulate a game that the kids have never cared to watch.
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Is it just me?
I’m a baseball guy so I’m yearning for some saber-metrics that tell me I’m not the only one that has grown to think that tee-ball has jumped the shark.
The decline in baseball’s place as “America’s Pastime” is well documented and the data is indisputable.
A Gallop poll released in early January, showed the following order of America’s favorite sports: 37% football, 11% basketball and 9% baseball. This was the lowest reported level for baseball in history. The high water mark during my lifetime for baseball was 1992’s level of 16%.
The participation numbers for baseball in America, though, are encouraging. Participation rates are growing at an average annual rate of 3.9% over a 5 year period and a whopping 6% in the last year alone according to the Sport & Fitness Industry Association’s 2018 Topline
Report. As a point of reference, the five year average for tackle football was down 3%, basketball is flat and soccer is up nearly 2%.
Little league is, rightfully, trumpeting these numbers as leading indicators of baseball’s return to its previous predominance. I interpret these facts differently when taken together – if participation is up and popularity is down then baseball has a first-impression problem.
Yes, more kids are playing and less are liking doing so.
So, I say it is high time to change the way we introduce future generations of American kids to the game. Tee-ball needs to go or, at minimum, should evolve.
Change Tee-Ball Idea #1: Substitute Wiffle Ball
The 5 year-old’s I coach could care less about stepping and throwing, a proper swing or running through first base or stopping at second. These kids want to move, to run and to hear their parents cheer for them as they do it.
When I tell Everett to play shortstop he has no idea where to go. The 4 year-old on my squad, Brady, still can’t locate first base.
There is no need to worrying about proper positions, what hand to put your glove on or how to hit a ball off a tee at these ages.
If don’t have to scrap baseball concepts, but want kids to take an interest, why not simply replace tee-ball with coach-pitch wiffle ball?
Our little sluggers will see the light-weight ball hit the bat and fly into the air – not dribble weakly toward the awaiting pitcher.
Outfielders all have chance to participation with each new batter – not only those standing closest to the tee near home plate.
If the kids in the field lose interest, there is no danger of outfield tomfoolery – the ball can’t hurt anyone and either could a thrown bat.
And, best of all, fielders give chase to the hitters as they avoid being tagged out.
Change Tee-Ball Idea #2: Play Tag Instead
Another option to better introduce kids to baseball might involve creating a game that teaches pieces of the game without similar rules.
If a parent wants to compel their kid to action, or to listen, or to move around there is one tried-and-true game that will do it: a game of TAG! There is something about running around avoiding each other that kids love.
Building from that love and mixing in baseball skills might be a creative way to grow the game.
My vision is simple and, admittedly, not well defined (yet):
(1) Teams have 5 kids and line up on opposite baselines
(2) Hula hoops are placed at all bases on the infield
(3) Each team sends up one batter while the other four kids stay put
(4) Using soft balls that mirror the colors of the team’s jersey, each batter hits four balls off of a tee as quickly as possible.
(5) When the coach yells “Go!”, the players on the baseline run to get the balls of their jersey color while the batters drop the bats and try to “tag” the opposite team “out” before they place their team’s balls inside of any hula hoop.
(6) The team with the most balls in the hula hoops “wins”
(7) Repeat for each player.
The baseball purest in me so badly wants to dismiss this idea, however, all of my kids just told me that “this sounds fun.”
Tee-ball is about fun first and baseball second.
Flipping those two priorities around has led us to where the game is now – a place where a baseball-loving, volunteer coach and father of five is struggling to find ways to describe the game he loves without saying that “it sucks.”
