Review: The Most Expensive Game in Town

June 11, 2012

I never had the chance to play Little League or in high school when I was a kid. And by the time I got to college I was so far “behind,” the best I could do was serve as manager for the varsity team. My parents didn’t want me doing anything “fun” on the Sabbath (which may explain why it was okay to hold a job but not engage in sports, but that’s a story for my therapist another time). always cite this as the reason I never became a professional baseball player.

My daughter, on the other hand, played soccer for a couple of years until she was old enough for softball. I still can picture her crying when the coach of the 10-and-under travel team (Sports Illustrated‘s Peter King) called to tell her she hadn’t made the team, because, although her skills were superior to many of the other kids, she was basically very small and frail and her feared for her safety; she made it the following year and played until she aged out of the available teams at 14.

She subsequently had to give it up which was a hard time for me for a few reasons, not the least of which is that, like many parents feel about their kids, I thought she was really talented and I was living vicariously through her accomplishments (I know, very sad). Her small strike zone allowed her to work out and inordinate amount of walks; her amazing eye/hand coordination gave her great bunting skills since she wasn’t going to hit with much power; and her arm strength belied her appearance. But what impressed her coaches (and me) most was her baseball head. She seemed to know instinctively what to do with the ball on defense, regardless of her position, and she played everywhere, but especially up the middle: centerfield, short, second, and, surprisingly, even behind the plate (she made her “debut” as pitcher and struck out 12 batters; it was all downhill from there).

In one sense, I suppose we were lucky: by leaving the travel/elite team entity at that point, she saved us a ton of money in fees, equipment upgrades, transportation, not to mention time. And as our only child, there was none of the scheduling hair-pullers that families with multiple kids have deal with.

And that’s softball: imagine if she was a hockey player, having to buy new skates every few years, ever-increasingly-sized uniforms, etc. And of course, the longer she played, the greater the expectations I would have had about the possibilities of getting a sports scholarship. Pie-in-the-sky. That’s the premise behind Mark Hyman’s new book, The Most Expensive Game in Town: The Rising Cost of Youth Sports and the Toll on Today’s Families, which was reviewed in The New York Times Sunday book supplement this past week.

We still have the occasional catch in the back yard and I keep hoping she’ll join informal group at her college, but of course, that’s her decision at this point.

 

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