As my son Eric wraps up his third year of travel baseball, I realize I have different expectations than most dads.
Many dads focus on our sons’ performance on the field, with little tolerance for mistakes. A boy will make an error, and some dad will scream in disgust — “That can’t happen! It can’t happen!” — as he slams his hand against the chainlink fence and turns his back on the field of play.
In a perfect world, all youth baseball fields would have a huge replay board in centerfield. Whenever a dad criticizes an 11-year-old for a misplay, the scoreboard would instantly show that dad making the same error as a kid.
But there’s no past footage of us dads playing baseball. You know, because none of us made the big leagues or played at a level high enough to warrant television coverage.
So, instead, here’s a link to an hour-long YouTube compilation of atrocious errors made by major leaguers:
These are professional athletes who have practiced thousands of hours more than our sons and earn an average salary of over $5 million/year!
Yes, of course, I want my son and his teammates to play well.
But if even the pros make such mistakes, why do we obsess over every error in little league?
Maybe we’re measuring the wrong things.
The Character Index: Stats That Build Better Men
Today’s youth baseball is all about the numbers. For the past fifteen years, travel baseball teams have used an app called GameChanger that tracks the play-by-play action of every game. Within the app, you can view advanced statistical data that rivals what is available for the big leagues.
While most dads focus on batting average, strikeouts, and errors, I wish there was an app to track other important stats.
Instead of measuring the speed of a pitcher’s fastball, I wish we tracked how fast a player hustles out to his position in the field after the end of an inning. Or how quickly he sprints out of the box to first base when he is disappointed about hitting an infield pop-up, one that could easily be dropped.
Rather than knowing how many hits he had, I am more interested in a kid’s PPG (Pouts Per Game) when the umpire makes a questionable call or something else doesn’t go his way.
I would love to see a game with no MR’s (Miraculous Recoveries) on either team. I’m talking about when a player lays on the ground with an apparent injury after he fails to make a play, like when he dives late into second base after the pitcher picks him off. Rather than him getting up and taking it like a man, we all sit through a charade as one or more coaches, an umpire, and sometimes a parent will run out onto the field before the boy miraculously recovers, jumps to his feet, and sprints off the field like nothing happened.
There should be a Dugout Departure Rate (DDR) stat measuring how often a boy leaves the dugout to talk to his mom or dad during the game, usually to get a snack or some emotional support after a rough at-bat. For those scoring at home, anything higher than a zero isn’t good.
A new metric called Equipment Left Behind (ELB) could track the number of batting gloves, sliding mitts, sunglasses, water bottles, and crocs that a player leaves behind in the dugout for someone else to retrieve after the game.
Instead of slugging percentage, I would rather know the percentage of eye contact a boy has with his coach when he is delivering an important message to the team.
Beyond the games, I would love a stat showing a player’s Total Balls Shagged (TBS) during team batting practice. This would measure how many balls he retrieved and put into the bucket for his coach while other kids stood around and joked in the outfield, looking like factory workers on a smoke break.
One of the most critical factors to success is showing up every day. Not just on game days but never missing a practice. Even better, not missing a morning workout at home when no one is watching, something the coach suggests but doesn’t require.
The Long Game
Let’s face it, very few of these boys will every play college baseball, let alone the pros.
But no matter which team wins or loses, we should be rooting for all of these kids to post great numbers in these other stats.
Because I guarantee the boy who does well in these other stats will likely succeed in life.
He will be the man I want working for my company.
He will be the man I want my daughter to marry.
He will be the man I want my son to be.
—
This article is republished with permission from Midwest Sense.
Image Credit: Picryl
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