June 9 - The rise of travel and showcase baseball for high-school aged players has come at the expense of American Legion baseball across the country. This issue isn’t more evident anywhere nationwide than in Northern Virginia.
Parents want their kid to get a scholarship. Nowadays, college coaches who can offer those free rides are at the showcase tournaments and events. So it makes sense to send them to those events. This comes at the detriment of Legion ball, which for decades set the bar for ball played during the summer months.
It’s unfortunate. I grew up in the Legion ball era, and it was good, quality ball. We didn’t need to travel to Georgia, South Carolina or Florida to face tough competition, it was just a short drive across the county.
And you know what’s funny? The top players back then were still found by college coaches. The adage goes, ‘If you can play, they’ll find you’. Between the high school and Legion seasons, those guys were found.
That being said, I think the showcase ball serves a great purpose. College coaches can now go to one location, as an example, during the current three-week stretch we’re in, and see literally hundreds of underclassmen play in Perfect Game’s national championships in Georgia. The complex they have down there, which was replicated on a smaller scale locally at the Virginia Baseball Complex just south of Fredericksburg, gives coaches a chance to perch in a bird’s eye tower and watch up to four games at a time.
This is a fantastic recruiting tool for these coaches. They’re able to go to one location for a couple weeks, and potentially lock up the majority of their next two recruiting classes. Or at least identify the kids who are now on that recruiting radar.
The shame here is that the growth and exposure of showcase ball has come at the expense of Legion ball. And to that notion, I have a suggestion.
Let’s make them both work.
Why not a six-week, 24-game Legion regular season schedule? Four games scheduled between Monday and Thursday, with nothing scheduled Friday and on the weekends. Players can then play in those games, and join their showcase teams for weekend events. The schedules align, with Legion district and state tournaments after the week-long Perfect Game events.
Sure, there are some issues. Pitching, namely. A kid pitching for two teams at the same is not a good idea. So give him the option: you either pitch for your Legion team, or you pitch for your showcase team. Not both. Issue resolved.
Oh, and the committed guys. Why are you still traveling all over the East Coast and beyond to showcase, when you have already committed to your college? This would help those guys, giving them the opportunity to play locally against some good competition.
It’s a simple solution, really. All it will take are some egos being set aside, coaches and administrators adjusting game schedules a bit, and those same folks working together to benefit what this is all about anyway: the kids.
