Wednesday, May 05, 2010

2010 Laguna Youth Baseball 11U All Star Tryout #2

Jack went to the second tryout for the 2010 Laguna Youth Baseball 11U All Star team on Sunday afternoon.

After the first all star tryout last weekend, someone asked me what I thought of the quality of the kids. I noted that since March 2008, Jack has played in about 120 baseball games.  About 60 of those games have been travel ball tournament quality games. Of the 30 kids at the first tryout, probably ten of them have as much or more experience.

My point with this rambling is that it is very difficult for boys who only play a couple months of rec baseball games in the spring to match up with the boys that substantially more game experience under their belt. Galdwell makes the point in Outliers that opportunities and repetitions make people successful. While there were half a dozen boys at the tryout who probably have the physicial tools to compete at this level, they just have not had enough repetitions to compare with the players who in some cases have played tournament baseball for more than three years.  This gap will only continue to get bigger over the next couple of years.

After the tryouts were over, I rolled the pitching machine out and Jack hit about 200 balls. With Breyton hitting one over the fence off of Scott during the scrimmage at tryout, Jack was determined that he was going to hit one out too. Much to his dismay, he was only able to hit about half a dozen off the centerfield fence.

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