Why is there any bureaucracy to Little League in the first place, though? Like why do we need to be doing any of this?
> To sign kids up for our city’s Little League baseball program, you have to prove that they’re residents, which is reasonable.
I don't really get that. What are we scared of here? People coming over the border to steal Little League coaching for their children? Is that a major concern somewhere?
> What are we scared of here? People coming over the border to steal Little League coaching for their children?
Yes, exactly this. It happens. It really does. In all sports. And not just parents seeking out "good" teams and coaches, but coaches recruiting kids to play. It gets to the point where parents put their kids in online schools, or private schools operated by a travel sports organization, so that they can get more practice time and more games.
Here’s what happens when you don’t have residency rules:
Suppose you have suburb A next to suburb B. B has an awesome Little League local organization, but A’s is awful. Parents from A all send their kids to play ball in B. The problem is that B’s resources are finite, too: there are only so many baseball fields available for practice at a time, or batting practice cages, etc. And since the kids from A that are coming over tend to be the more skilled ones, if B has too many kids apply than they have the resources, they’ll likely end up dropping the kids who actually live in B.
This is much, much more likely than you’d expect if you’ve never been directly involved with kids’ sports. You’d be amazed how many parents think their kid would be the next MLB rookie-of-the-year.
Why have it by residency then? Try out for a team, if you don’t get on it, try out for another one. It’s just kids playing ball, I don’t understand the high stakes. We used to just play pick up games in the park and that was fun too. No birth certificate required! Why is little league so serious?
A lot of the older kids take themselves to practice. My kid rode his bike to the park not far from our house. In general, it’s wonderful that this is an option. I’d hate it if he had to play in another city just because the parents from that city were all sending their kids here instead.
Little League is supposed to be a recreational league. I mean, they still treat it seriously and work hard to teach the kids good skills, but ultimately it should be open to any kid who wants to play. Keeping it local makes this a lot more possible.
I’m OK with the rules that Little League is trying to enforce. It’s just that I don’t like the mechanism by which they’re enforcing them.
> It’s just kids playing ball, I don’t understand the high stakes. We used to just play pick up games in the park and that was fun too. No birth certificate required! Why is little league so serious?
Dont be facetious. It is competitive league for little kids. It is not just kids playing sport for fun, as you said you need no organization for that. But, if what you want is competitions, coaches and performance, then you need an organized league.
It is different thing for kids/parents/families that are into that different competitive thing. Its existence is not preventing you to play ball with your own kids and their friends in park.
LL is bound to residency for several specific reasons but all geared towards the goal of fair play.
Throughout any city there are only so many public baseball fields (all run by the city). A set of fields covers so many square miles and a league set by residency gets access only to those fields in their close vicinity. Obviously you will have fields in poor areas as well as upper class areas, and from experience, the condition of those fields can vary widely. Naturally without boundary restrictions everyone would be signing up only to the nicest area leagues, leaving the poor ones to falter and those parks rundown even more.
Having a "try-out" system for kids (6-12) doesn't work for a wide variety of reasons.
Obvious one is safety. Mixing ages is dangerous and a try-out system would encourage it due to size of player pools. Doesn't matter how good a 7 year old, he cannot compare to a 12 year old. The worst 12 year old is still good enough to really injure a 7 year (or 8/9). At 46' (LL pitching distance)it has just about reached my ADULT limit of reaction time on a few occasion tossing to a 12 year old batter.
Other reason would be lack of balance in the teams and the leagues. You'd end up with super teams as some teams become loaded with talent (add in the above factor of no residency and you'd have the loaded super teams end up in the nicest areas) and cut those kids not good enough (ending up in the poor areas to play). The not good enough kids would have huge blow to their esteem as well as the fun of playing baseball as they would routinely not make a few try-outs each season and falter down to the bad teams. Those bad teams would eventually play the super teams and have no chance. Not fun to be part of losing all the time while the better kids always win and get to play in nicest parks.
For those who don't have kids and experienced youth sports, many of the answers to your questions might not be obvious. It isn't "just kids playing ball". You do that with your group of friends. Playing for LL you are getting an organization that works hard at providing an organized, equal and fun baseball experience with your surrounding communities. They have the criteria in place that they do to try and deal with the many chances of having overzealous parents and coaches cheat/manipulate and ruin the experience for kids and parents.
What the OP brought up and what they are doing with the data IS a concern though. One I never thought about when I signed my son up. It is SAD world we are in IMO in which data is worth THAT much that it is becoming the norm for companies to make a lot of extra money in harvesting it. Something has to be done about this. It is everywhere now it seems. From a simple app installed on my phone to Even Little League is now a possible data theft/ Broker threat willing to sell your info or lose it in a hack?
> To sign kids up for our city’s Little League baseball program, you have to prove that they’re residents, which is reasonable.
I don't really get that. What are we scared of here? People coming over the border to steal Little League coaching for their children? Is that a major concern somewhere?