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4 years ago-when L'il Spock was between 7th and 8th grade-he played on an area traveling team.

As background-There was a pretty good pitcher from a neighboring town on the team, who also played on 2 other teams. His arm got wrecked that year-The 3 coaches of the combination of the teams pitched the shit out of him.

I remember at one of our last games-it was said of him that "His arm is mush." His arm got wrecked as a 13 YO and he can't pitch anymore.
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There is a kid in Littlest Spock's grade (who happens to be on Littlest Spock's little league team this year.

This kid is something special as a pitcher(and all-around athlete as well). He certainly has the potential to pitch in college (and maybe beyond)-His parents are doing the special camps and nation-wide traveling leagues and so forth-to put him into position for whatever comes next.

Trouble is-he is also playing on 3 teams-He pitched in our game the other night and he really shouldn't have-per his grandparents his arm was hurting.

The only good thing is that he keeps a pretty low pitch count-because the vast majority of his pitches are strikes.

I am looking forward to see where he might be able to take his skills-but, Gawd, I hope his arm doesn't get wrecked through short-sighted attempts to win games at the youth levels.

Spock wrote:4 years ago-when L'il Spock was between 7th and 8th grade-he played on an area traveling team.

As background-There was a pretty good pitcher from a neighboring town on the team, who also played on 2 other teams. His arm got wrecked that year-The 3 coaches of the combination of the teams pitched the shit out of him.

I remember at one of our last games-it was said of him that "His arm is mush." His arm got wrecked as a 13 YO and he can't pitch anymore.
.........................................
There is a kid in Littlest Spock's grade (who happens to be on Littlest Spock's little league team this year.

This kid is something special as a pitcher(and all-around athlete as well). He certainly has the potential to pitch in college (and maybe beyond)-His parents are doing the special camps and nation-wide traveling leagues and so forth-to put him into position for whatever comes next.

Trouble is-he is also playing on 3 teams-He pitched in our game the other night and he really shouldn't have-per his grandparents his arm was hurting.

The only good thing is that he keeps a pretty low pitch count-because the vast majority of his pitches are strikes.

I am looking forward to see where he might be able to take his skills-but, Gawd, I hope his arm doesn't get wrecked through short-sighted attempts to win games at the youth levels.

I know the idea of the pitch-counts is to keep the kids from wrecking their arms. But if they play on multiple teams, that seems to be bypassed - shame on the parents! How is coach on team 2 supposed to know if the kid has pitched the night before, and (if he'd been in one league) normally wouldn't pitch that night?

It reminds me of journeymen boxers who would get knocked out one night (normally requiring several weeks or even months off, if the state boxing council was worth its salt) who'd cross a state line and fight the next weekend, get knocked out again. It might get you a paltry payday, but it's not helping you in the long run.

A lot of parents simply don't know any better. Coaches should, but far too many of them don't, or (worse) don't care.

Back when I used to read Baseball Prospectus regularly, their injury columnist at the time (whose name escapes me at the moment) had some stories I found absolutely horrifying of college coaches who vastly overpitched top pitchers, potentially shortening or sacrificing the players' pro careers in order to advance their own. --Bob

One of my other youth sports rants happened in 7th and 8th grade football. 7th was the first year L'il Spock's class had a football. Shortly after that an elementary league was started We are a small school, but there were enough kids to have a 7th grade team and an 8th grade team-separately.

If I were running that program-I would kind of view it as my job to develop players for varsity-and have fun etc.

Both those years-one kid played QB every SINGLE play. I can understand that he is your QB-but maybe play him 3 quarters and put another guy in for a quarter. Hey, what if Golden Child QB-gets hurt, moves, doesn't go out for football etc? There is nobody ready to step into the QB role.

As juniors on varsity last fall-things weren't going well-so to shake it up-coach put somebody different in at QB-kind of tough for him to step in with very little QB exp

One of the classes behind L'il Spock-has a pair of QBs and they alternate series/quarters-whatever. That is a so much better way to do it.