Kids Don't Watch Baseball
Recently we made the decision to get rid of our cable provider and subscribe to a streaming service. Monthly expenses played a big factor in the decision, but the biggest influence was the fact that we simply didn't watch much TV that wasn't sports in our house. If it wasn't "The Office" then our TV was tuned to something that featured a ball or a puck. However, before making the switch we had to ensure that we would still be able to stream and watch every major league baseball game.
I am a passionate fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, but more than that, I just love watching baseball. From the iconic broadcasters to the familiar backdrops of the stadiums, I feel so connected to my friends, family, and even those loved ones who have passed on when I'm just relaxing and listening to or watching a baseball game. It doesn't even have to be the Cardinals. I can sit down and watch any game. For countless years Vin Scully was my bedtime voice as I'd have the Dodgers game on in the bedroom as I was falling asleep.
For the past decade or more, I have listened to other complain about the pace of play in baseball and how it was turning off young fans to the game. I thought that was ridiculous. MLB attendance numbers were still very strong and kids knew the best players in the game, along with their number. Even more proof in my opinion was the fact that I would go to countless travel baseball tournaments with my kids and my team and literally see close to a thousand kids every weekend playing the sport. How could anyone argue that the game was not appealing to young kids? If it was so boring, then why are so many kids playing the game? Why were so many families spending hundreds of dollars every weekend if the kids didn't love the sport? I brushed off all of the baseball is boring talk, and felt like it was being generated from a bunch of millenial media types that just didn't "get it." However, as I've been working with my own 13u travel baseball team, I'm realizing more and more that while kids may enjoy playing baseball, many kids most definitely are not watching baseball.
As the kids I have coached have gotten older, the game that we play is becoming more and more like the game played on TV. Fundamentals will always be an essential part of coaching youth sports, but really good coaches work hard to develop their players' overall understanding of the game. It goes well beyond teaching the proper cut-offs and various bunt coverages. As the field gets bigger, it's the smaller things that can really determine if you win or lose. And many times, those things are so small that the casual fan or player may not even notice.
Before we do a number of drills or situations in practice, I like to ask my team a number of different questions about given scenarios. Maybe it's the teacher in me, but I never like just giving my kids the answer. Even when I ask a question and somebody actually gets the answer right, I usually try to follow it up with a why. As we have gotten older and the situations have gotten a little more complex, I have noticed that I am getting more incorrect answers or questions that are left unanswered all together because kids just do not watch the game of baseball anymore. Those unanswered questions make me realize just how much coaching kids really need.
As a kid and now as an adult, one of my favorite things about watching and listening to baseball are all of the endless things that I learn every time I tune in. When I was younger I thought it was stupid that all of the analysts for the games were former players. I didn't think it was fair that the average joe couldn't go in and analyze the game. Young broadcasters would go to school for 4 years and then travel the country from mid-sized town to mid-sized town only to watch a coveted position given to a former athlete with no formal training. How is that even remotely fair? But as the years have gone on, I've come to not only appreciate, but truly love the knowledge and insight the former athletes share every night about the game of baseball. The vast majority of my baseball knowledge has come from simply listening to analysts break down the game and watching it with my own eyes.
Now as I coach middle school-aged kids, I realize that so few, if any, actually watch and study the game of baseball. So few kids have the true baseball instincts that come from watching and playing the game consistently from a young age. I see those instincts when I watch young kids play hockey, football, and basketball, but a number of those instinctual things have to be taught repeatedly to young baseball players.
Maybe part of the problem is how baseball is shown on TV. When watching the game at home, kids and fans can only see 3 players. The only opportunity kids get to see their favorite player in action throughout the game is if they are the pitcher or catcher. Otherwise, they get to see their favorite player about ten times a game when they are at bat or a ball is put in play in their direction. When watching the other major sports you can see every player on the field during every play. You can watch them before, during, and after live action. Not baseball, so maybe that is why kids don't tune in. As amazing as Mike Trout is, he is probably on the actual screen for a total of 10-15 minutes during a three hour game.
In my opinion as a coach, this really inhibits the overall understanding and knowledge kids can gain from watching the sport. Rarely do kids get to watch a game and observe their favorite player or position for three hours. But even more important is that kids are not sitting to even watch baseball; they would rather play something else. The idea of getting friends together to go play baseball somewhere is something that died with the public baseball fields in the 1990's.
Yet, even the one facet of the game that kids can watch every time they tune in is still a mystery to most of them. When working with our pitchers and hitters on how to approach an at-bat, so few have an approach. Young pitchers need to be taught the importance of location as they get older and changing speeds. So many pitchers also believe that every pitch has to be a strike. They need to be taught the value of changing a hitters eye-level or how to properly back someone off the plate. They don't understand the art of how changing speeds can disrupt a hitter's timing. As young hitters, they do not understand that the top teams have an approach when they pitch to them. They do not understand why they are not seeing pitches down the middle of the plate. They do not understand how hitting lower in the order is not a punishment, but a way to see better pitches. On the flip side, kids hitting in the middle of the lineup need to be taught to be more patient and to lay off pitcher's pitches. Things that you can watch play out in every major league game for three hours every day, but so few kids actually watch that.
As a baseball coach in today's world, it is so important to be a teacher of the game. So few kids really understand the intricacies of the game. They know where to go on the field, but they rarely understand how your position in the lineup impacts the pitches you are going to see in an at-bat. They struggle to understand how the score of a game influences the approach to running bases. Rarely do middle infielders understand the subtleties of positioning with different pitchers on the mound or hitters at the plate, or where they should be in order to turn a double play while being able to cover the ball still hit in the hole. Baserunners don't need to be taught the different types of angles and lead-offs they should have given the situation. And all of this is assuming that kids have been taught and drilled the basic backups, rotations, and rules of the game. At thirteen, we still have to review those things every practice. For some kids it is now second nature, but for others who do not watch baseball at all of have not been with us as long, it is not review; instead it is a new concept that they now have to absorb along with the more complex parts of the game.
When I start writing these things down in practice plans I start to get the same feeling I get when writing my lesson plans, when am I ever going to get enough time to teach all of these things to my players/students? I'm not one who believes that once it is covered one time then the kids should just do it. I have learned over the years that it takes a minimum of five practices reviewing the same concepts before it becomes something that is automatic, and even then not every kid will do things the right way.
With so many more kids playing high level baseball, the major league game is getting younger and younger. Kids skills and experience facing other top level talent is better than ever, but the trickle down effect of kids not watching baseball as a kid is also more prevalent than ever when watching the game. You see young players in major league games making mistakes that you wonder how they were not taught growing up. Major league teams have more coaches and positional specialists than ever to try and compensate for this.
As youth coaches it easy to get caught up in winning games and acquiring more talent to help win those games. However, as an ambassador for the game I love so dearly, I want all of my kids to enter their high school years as a finished product in terms of understanding the finer points of the game. I want my players' high school coaches to be able to lean on them as leaders in teaching the other kids the smaller parts of the game. I want my players to instinctually position themselves without a high school coach having to do it for them. I watch so many of these travel ball games where I see kids grossly out of position with nobody correcting them. I feel bad for the high school coaches who will have to spend the countless hours correcting these bad habits. I feel bad for the high school coaches that will have to position their kids with every batter and situation after these kids have been playing the game for so many years up to that point with little or no coaching.
Youth travel tournaments often see the teams and coaches with the best players walk away with the trophies. It doesn't get much different at the high school level either. But as a youth coach I try to watch for the teams and players that do the little things the right way. As the field gets bigger and the talent starts to even out, it is the little things that start to become even more glaring. My team does not have the most talent, but I think we do the little things better than most teams. We work so hard to make sure that kids are in the right spots on every pitch, and that hard work pays off when you look out there and don't have to always position them. You don't see both middle infielders vacating their spots on a runner stealing. You don't see infielders creating 70 foot gaps holding runners on unnecessarily.
Those little things go unnoticed by hundreds of people because so few people today truly watch and study the game of baseball. Kids do not instinctually do those things because so few actually watch the game and see the subtleties of what is going on. Even those who do watch are rarely given the opportunity to observe these things because of the way the game is presented. It is so important for youth coaches to understand and teach these things to the kids. After all, we are the ones who teach kids the correct habits and approach versus creating those habits that become so difficult to break. I used to think that high school coaches had it so easy because of all the baseball these kids were playing before their high school years, but I've come to respect them even more because of some of the horrible habits they have to break these kids of from their years of playing under poor coaches.
A lot of these things could be fixed if kids would just watch more baseball, but that is a trend I see going in the wrong direction. I worry about the future of the sport with attendance and viewership down the road. But in the immediate future I worry more and more about young baseball players just simply not understanding the game that I love so dearly. The beauty of baseball is not always the physical action, but the mental chess match the takes place on every single pitch. In every game there are over 300 opportunities to watch and learn and match wits with your opponent. When I do watch games with my kids I'll often call out and predict pitches with them to try and help them understand the mental side of things. I'm going to miss coaching when it's gone in a few years, but more importantly I'm going to miss the teaching part.
