Unfortunately, the people who need the message in this book are probably not going to be looking for such a book. That's a pity.As sports psychologist Dr. Jack Llewellyn points out, 75 percent of all youth baseball players drop out by age 13. That's before they even begin to have the development necessary to begin to develop key skills for the game. The main reason for this is that parents forced the children to play, and the children had a bad experience.
Dr. Llewellyn also takes dead aim at the adults who abuse youth baseball by misbehaving themselves and imposing adult objectives onto the kids.
The book is organized around three perspectives: What parents, coaches and athletes need to know. Each section talks about goals, best practices, and provides an extensive set of questions and answers.
The book's credibility is bolstered by 12 interviews with top baseball players, coaches, and an orthopedic surgeon (don't start throwing curves until 14 or older). Many are from the Atlanta Braves and New York Yankee organizations, so everyone will recognize these men as winners. Their experiences and advice match Dr. Llewellyn's proposals.
Although the book has many long lists of do's and don't's, these basically boil down to being sure the players have fun, the experience builds parent-child relationships, and that the game experiences help establish important psychological development for life (such as dealing with setbacks).
For parents, the advice begins with picking the right program and coach for your child. For coaches, it begins with the concept of making youth baseball a beneficial experience for all of the kids. For athletes, the book begins with the idea of playing baseball because you like it. The advice to each group reflects what is said to the others. As a result, a parent who is a team coach could read this book with her or his child and have a family discussion about what should be done. That is not suggested directly, but it would be helpful.
I had no disagreements with the book based on my 18 years of coaching youth sports. In my experience, it is good to change the emphasis suggested here a little. Start by asking each player what she or he wants to get out of the season. Then set up a specific program to help that player in that way. And check regularly with the player to see how it's going. If you do that, lots of what are on these long lists will take care of themselves.
The book could have been strengthened by providing more guidance for how to handle problems with parents and coaches. Working with the kids is the easy part, by comparison.
After you have read and enjoyed this book, I suggest that you think about how school should be conducted. I suspect that school is now as off-the-mark as youth baseball has become. The things that administrators and teachers focus on so much are certainly not things that have added much value to my life. How about yours? How can we help our children to get the right kind of education and experience with learning?
Be sure you have the right goals . . . and then go ahead!
