Leaderboard

I believe the issue is video games and electronic devices that have taken away from the pickup game mentality. I have a 14-year-old freshman and have asked this very question to him and his friends. His friends are split up between those who are active in sports and others that are not. They all, however, want to play video games pretty much 24/7. They don't want to go outside as much as we did growing up. And to be honest, if we had the same video games and access to electronics I probably would have been the same way. My son is very active in baseball. We moved him from in-house/LL back when he was 10 years old. I wanted to prep him for HS baseball and give him the best chance to do it. He was already throwing too hard for the kids in LL to catch and in fact, his LL coach moved him to the OF because his son ( 1b ) was too afraid to catch the ball. Travel baseball has been great for competition in some aspects, but it's becoming too watered down. I have a background in college baseball and focused on the development of the kids and getting the kids ready to play at the next level. A lot of my fellow coaches, however, are trying to win all games and trophies. We had a team last year in the area play 105 games and had a kid with almost 150 innings pitched. That's insane. Every kid on my team pitched. I spread it out across all arms. The parents in travel baseball are horrible as a whole. They all believe little Johnny is going to not only make it to college but start at SS. I was helping our 10u team try out kids last summer and one of the mothers comes up and states that she wanted to know if her son was going to play SS and CF throughout his career because she wanted to get him the best baseball scholarship available. I looked at this 9 year old and asked her, so anyone in your family have a background or pedigree who played baseball at an advance level. Nope. Why do you think your son is going to do this. She just said she had money and that should solve everything. I told her that this is a very complex sport to project a 9-year-olds development pattern and how they will grow if they like the sport, and what their long-term goals are. The boy was very much undersized as well. He looked like a kid ready for tball. I asked how tall was the father, she said 5'4. She was 4'11. No one in her family is over 5'6. But Jose Altuve is short and made the majors. I told her that citing a unicorn as a pattern of success is not a good thing to base future success with. I ran the tryouts. The boy was afraid of the ball, couldn't catch, hit or throw. I referred her to the local LL. She was livid with me. A week later I get a snarky email about how she made some travel team that has like 7 teams at 10u and is cashing a check at her son's expense. I talk about how hard it is to move onto each level. When we play in national tournaments like Perfect Game, Cooperstown, etc you see how you truly fit in. It doesn't help to stave off delusion. My son hit .750 in Cooperstown and I had some parent screaming at me to put their kid in at SS and to lead off over my son because some "mythical" scout was there to look at their 12-year-old. Its insane. That boy was hitless and was striking out against advanced pitching at a rate of 85%. Parents treat travel baseball like free agency. Each year they jump from program to program. More worried about the brand than the training or what is best for their kid. In travel baseball, exposure to professional training is probably one of the best benefits. Those programs who focus on winning first probably are not going to build your boy into the player that they are going to be. They focus also on the boys who mature early. My son pitched last year in a tournament in Texas where one of the Texas teams was averaging a 14u player that was 6'1 and 200 lbs. They were bigger than the varsity team at his HS. I shut my son down for the fall to give his arm, body, and mind a rest before the HS grind picks up. He plays for an HS travel team in the summer that starts working out in November. He works out 3 days a week with a trainer. Has a hitting instructor and I am his pitching instructor. Unfortunately, the days of walking up and playing HS baseball because you want to are over. I have heard some of the HS coaches state they want relatively finished products in HS and don't want to teach kids fundamentals.

Sure, I see random kids wearing Sox gear all the time. The Cubs are obviously more possible, but it’s not like our fanbase is dead.

LaVine trying to miss a FT, it bouncing in off the back board and rim, then going in is a good summary of his shooting right now.

Game 2 close. Price threw a ton of change ups to stifle the 'Stros his last start, 43%. Guess who he is giving credit to for learning the change up. None other than James Shields.

Both? 😎

Sale or Rogers ?

This was a great read.

Pretty good example of what is both great and bad about the playoffs in tonight's game. Every pitch counts. If the catcher's mitt moves at all, it's a ball. Both Kershaw and Sale threw a bunch of pitches that looked good but were called balls. With analytics, players are more patient. The strike zone is tiny. So, the games take forever - especially in the playoffs. I went to bed in the 7th. The game was already well over 3 hours long.

Anecdotally, I was coaching youth baseball until a couple years ago. I loved it, there was a fair amount of interest from kids starting from the lowest ages until the first year they do live pitching, then at age 10-11 (proper "Little League" age) there was a sudden, sharp dropoff in the numbers of kids. I don't know if that was overall participation or just the league I was playing in, but I was really surprised and kind of disappointed to see that. That was the age I taught myself to be a switch hitter so I could swing like Ken Griffey Jr. Also the environment was different from what I remember growing up... we used to ride our bikes to practice by ourselves and our parents were barely involved except as coaches or to come to games, these kids' parents would drive them to practice and watch them the whole time. I would be thinking "GO HOME AND COME PICK THEM UP LATER. DON'T YOU HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO?"

I mean if the Sox made the playoffs in 1960, he'd totally have season tickets now.

I'm not worried about our fanbase being dead now, I'm worried about 10-15 years down the line when they could leave. I think this rebuild is incredibly critical for the long-term viability of the Sox in Chicago. If they fail, the majority of the fanbase in 15 years could be 50-75 years old. Hell, I'm in my early 30s and I'd be pushing 50 myself by then.

How about just “operate EFFECTIVELY through adversity”, like the tiny market Oakland Athletics have managed to do throughout their ENTIRE existence in that city? 19 trips to the postseason in their 51 years operating in Oakland. FIVE trips to the World Series during that time , with FOUR WS titles to show for it. All of this achieved despite NOT playing in a facility that the owner’s were able to design with optimal revenue-generating potential, OR taking in three decade’s worth of handsomely subsidized, taxpayer provided profits.

And this is the team the fan base has always had - the one that is one of ONLY THREE TEAMS in all of baseball that has never gone to the playoffs in consecutive seasons, AND has made only five playoff appearances in the 59 years since the ‘59 World Series. The fan base we’ve always had simply reflects the team we’ve always had.

You're probably right, but that isn't a good thing. I ask you this question: Have you seen a random kid wearing Sox gear in the past 5 years? I haven't, and it isn't good.

How many of those followers are outside of Chicago? And I’d wager the Cubs’ fanbase is far more likely to have Twitter accounts that ours. I think this an incredibly flawed way to determine our share of the city.

Twitter follows. if you do that, 30% is generous. It is closer to 25% than 30%. If you combine the total number of twitter follows for the Cubs and Sox, and then divide the Sox share it is roughly 27% I rounded up to 30 just to make it easier.