Should We Let Little League Die?

Fewer kids are playing it and the ones that do seem stressed out. Is it even a good thing to begin with?

I played organized youth baseball until I was 14 or so, and the fun moments I remember are vastly outnumbered by the terrible and stressful ones: botching a critical play and feeling horrible about it for a week, failing to make all-star teams because the coaches nominated their own kids, the tension and agita of pretending these games have actual stakes, and the sense that if you don’t perform at your best, you’re letting everybody down.

I had a great time playing Little League (including my off-the-charts amazing pitching career!), but was blessed by a perfect set of parents for it: a father who couldn't know any less about sports who was glad we played but never went to any games, and a mother who spent the entire game with her back to the field gabbing with the other moms.

This guys solution? Pickup baseball:

In contrast, the most fun I had in childhood was with ad hoc games with other kids from my neighborhood: basketball on my driveway until dark, baseball with maybe four other kids in a vacant lot. Spontaneous play is better than organized play. The two can coexist, of course. But spontaneous play allows children to be in charge of their worlds for a while, to set and explore their own rules and boundaries, to exercise their imaginations in addition to their bodies.

I also had non-sanctioned baseball fun:

As much as I knew about baseball (or, looking back, as much as I THOUGHT I knew), before Little League my baseball life had primarily consisted of playing catch with my older brother. We’d go outside and throw the ball back and forth to each other until I, fed up with the broiling heat and gnats engulfing my head, would “accidentally” throw the ball over my brother’s head and into the corn field behind him. Now, my brother is still one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. But over the years, I pulled the ol’ “whoops!” trick maybe, oh, 19,000 times…and EVERY time my brother would spin around like a dog that sees a pork chop flying over it’s head and sprint after the ball…while I walked back inside the house. Oh, every single time I would get my ass beat once he got the ball and came back inside; but at least I was back inside in the air conditioning. Prolly watching reruns of “Family.” Cough. The other game we came up with during those years was a game that involved a crushed Coke can as a “ball.” We’d play behind the shed, wherein one of us would pitch the can and the other would try to hit it over the shed for a home run. Hits the roof it’s a triple, over a certain line a double etc etc. Needless to say, after about 18 seconds the “ball” is basically a shredded disc of aluminum. You know what wins in a battle between shredded metal and human skin? Needless to say our hands would be shredded and bloodied almost immediately; also probably needless to say at this point is that of course it wouldn’t stop us from playing for another 3 hours. Though I did have to give up my idea for salt mittens.