Are kids pampered today?

#1

I’m coaching a 13-14 year old team, i’m an assistant because I’m still playing myself…

and i swear so many kids complain about their arm hurting its ridiculous, if they pitch bad it’s because they’re arm hurt…I remember when i was 12 and we had the all star tournament I had bronchitis and could barely breathe, i was coughing horribly and my parents wanted me to stay home but there was no way i was missing a game.

I’ve sprained my ankle during the week playing basketball where it still hurt pretty bad to run on it and pitch on it but that wasn’t going to make me miss a game.

I had two kids throwing 20 pitches had them rest for about 5 minutes and throw 20 more then sent them out to do long toss. I was working with the infielders and I look out to see their “long toss” was 20 ft apart from each other. They’re arms were “hurt”…so anyway I tell them they’re arm is supposed to be sore when you haven’t been throwing regularly in the offseason.

One of the kids fathers second guessed me in front of the team, I’m still pretty irritated by it but I had a talk with him about it. When I had them throwing the 20 pitches on the mound it was nothing but fastballs and I had them throwing about 75% velocity. We start playing in a couple weeks and this parent expects his kid to be out there throwing 60-70 pitches at 100% strength with virtually no conditioning on the arm.

I just don’t get it, and of course the person’s father is one of those dad’s whose never played a day of baseball in his life but he thinks he knows everything there is to know.

Kids just don’t throw as hard as they did 8 years ago where I’m at, it’s like most of him have lost that gamer spirit. Every team I’ve worked with has had 2 or 3 kids with that killer instinct, you can tell they really wanna be out there, improve, and learn but others wanna take it so slow and if they gotta bruise they don’t wanna do anything.

:x

#2

oh yeah, true!
i remember the good old days in Asian little league baseball, the coach would hold the kid still and force him to lower his body to teach him how to block a groundball with his body~~
the coach would also have a slick in his hand, if you dont do it properly, you get a woop ass~
and if the kid EVER complains…hahaha…
thats how the Taiwanese little league team use to win 13 consective little league world series.
now days if you force the kids to do all that, child service comes in?? sigh, whats wrong with this world? and there goes the titles, hahahaha

#3

Part of what you’re seeing is a lack of education. But you need to remember that how things work today is a lot different than how they worked when us adults were kids. When I was a kid, there was no travel ball. There were no tournaments where you could play up to 6 or 7 games in a weekend. Kids didn’t really play on 2 or 3 different teams at the same time. The intensity levels were lower.

A lot of people think kids are pampered today but the fact is that given the situation today, they need to be to a certain extent. Coaches and parents need to be more involved to better manage the work load. A the same time, they need to not push so hard that baseball becomes a job because that’s when kids lose the desire to play. Is it possible to over-pamper kids? Sure. But things are different today. Comparing today to yesterday is comparing apples and oranges, IMHO.

#4

[quote=“Roger”]
A lot of people think kids are pampered today but the fact is that given the situation today, they need to be to a certain extent. Coaches and parents need to be more involved to better manage the work load. A the same time, they need to not push so hard that baseball becomes a job because that’s when kids lose the desire to play. Is it possible to over-pamper kids? Sure. But things are different today. Comparing today to yesterday is comparing apples and oranges, IMHO.[/quote]

i think “lack of education” nailed it…atleast baseball education

this parent I’ve known since the kid was 9 years old so that’s roughly 5 years…He’s not a baseball person, he doesn’t know baseball and from past experience he will be the guy telling his son to quit whining about his arm, he will always constantly be on him “throw harder! throw harder!” in game time. Right now it’s practice, he doesn’t want his son throwing hard at all, he doesn’t want his son to do long toss. I mean 40 pitches and 5 minutes of long toss is nothing, it should be a piece of cake. He doesn’t want his son doing either of those two things but when we play in a few weeks and his son isn’t ready to throw 5 innings he’s going to be on his sons case for not throwing hard or accurate, he’s probably gonna be upset that his son isn’t pitching as many innings as he believes he should.

He’s worried about his kid’s arm being hurt for the wrong reason you know what I mean. He expects his kid to do nothing over the winter, take it easy in practice, then go out and throw at 100% velocity in a few weeks for 5 or 6 innings…THAT is how you hurt your arm

While everyone else is conditioned and can throw a good 4 or 5 innings I will literally have to keep his son on a pitch count worth about 2 innings probably

#5

I think the biggest thing contributing to the “soft” label on kids today is that they don’t play enough baseball away from their organized teams. This leads to a lack of that competitive spirit. Guys take lessons(individualism) and go to the field, play their game and leave it at the field. If they play bad, so what. If they play good, they get all the praise. But they grow up with the surroundings of “it’s all about you”.

When you play for “fun” with the neighborhood kids, if you play bad, you don’t get picked to play the next day. That really makes you want to perform up to par and try your hardest, to earn the respect of your peers. There are a lot of parents who discourage this type of play for that reason, that little Johnny didn’t get picked by the other boys. Or parents step in and tell kids to let everyone get their turn. It’s disheartning to see. But I think that this type of play is what taught many kids over the years how to win. No one from the neighborhood cares about what YOU did, they care if their team wins. Kids learn to do whatever it takes to win the game, wether it be laying down a bunt or hitting behind a runner.

Will this happen again in the United States, maybe not. But I do believe that, in talking to guys from other countries(Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico), this plays a big factor in the developement of young players. In the way they play the game.

I’m all for organized baseball at any level, but you have to work on your game in a “team” setting outside of your organized team.

#6

Another big factor is the parents they’re all tryin to make there kids the next Roger Clemens. They treat it more like a buisness and there kids start to think any little soreness is a major problem and sometimes dont even have anything wrong they just believe they do. Baseballs about having fun and people are forgetting it these days.