The schedules are up for Fall baseball and Pee Wee Soccer.  The schedules for travel league soccer will be up next week.  We’re all set to kick things off right after Labor Day.  PAL Ball was a big surprise this Fall with nine teams participating.  It will be a great time for those youngsters and a terrific way to say farewell to 2021.
          Community sports programs, like ours here at BAA, play an important role in the lives of young boys and girls, not to mention the community itself.  This is where parents bond with their sons and daughters and mark the time together.  It’s where boys and girls gather with friends, neighbors and schoolmates.  It is, by its very nature, recreational, and that’s an awesome thing.  You see, ‘recreational’ is not a dirty word and it doesn’t indicate the absence of competition or athletic development.

          If you know your baseball history, you know that what has become professional baseball began as a recreational release from mundane urban life.  Nearly two centuries ago, New Yorkers would take the ferry across the Hudson River to the Elysian Fields to recreate together in the fresh air, enjoying this newly-organized sport called Base Ball.  Yes, those were our national pastime’s humble beginnings, and that’s how it should begin for your youngster as well.
          Don’t fall prey to the professional juggernaut that has hijacked youth sports in recent years.  Don’t believe the lie that your son or daughter will be “behind the curve” if he or she doesn’t sign up for professional coaching and instruction at age nine.  Don’t sacrifice your family’s precious weekends on the altar of competitive tournaments and a 70-game summer schedule.  Let them grow into the game as children, playing to their hearts’ content and making timeless memories along the way.

          Support community baseball and let your children be children.  They’ll thank you for it, mom and dad.  I know.