Dealing with Coaches?

My Son is 12. He is a good kid. Athletic, good football player. Decided he wanted to try spring baseball. Someone actually told me he was a little old to start. 12 years old being too old for anything but kindergarten is about the most asinine thing I heard that week.
Anyway so he joins a team. We pay all the money, buy him all the crap he needs. Practice and work with him through the whole preseason. So now he can sit on the bench 4 out of 6 innings of every game and bat once if he is lucky. This is done so a selfish coach can win games. The team has 12 kids and the same 3 kids share all the bench time of every game.

They stopped holding practices the week games started. Half the other teams still practice but not ours. Exactly how is he suppose to learn anything without exposure to it? They knew he had no experience when they took him. My son loved the game when he first started. Now he looks at me and says he "Hates Baseball". I would hate it too if I spent 3 hours in a cage every game night.
How do you deal with A@#ole coaches like this?

Sounds like you started on a competitive team and should have looked into a recreation league where participation is usually guaranteed.  Most localities offer a very good recreation league, especially for first year players, where new skills can be developed. 

Or you could look into a lower level competitive team.  I assume he is on a 12AA team which if he is new to baseball is probably not a good fit.  There are some 12A teams, which are more competitive than rec teams, that might fit the bill and if you change now you might be able to salvage that love of baseball for him.

Whatever you do, do something today.  It will not get better and you will only getter madder as a parent. 

Good Luck     

 

I'm not saying that 12 is to late to start playing baseball. I think that the mom above should understand that most kids on a competitive teams have been playing since they were 5 and have a big head start. There are very few boys that could walk onto a competitive team at 12 years of age and start. My advise to the mom is to get their son into fall ball on a team that will play a couple of tournaments. I know fall ball is a great time to take kids and really catch them up. Also fall ball is not as competitive as spring/summer. I would also consider private hitting lessons and fielding if you have the money. Also there are a lot of coaches on the forum that would probable give your son some one on one time if you asked them? If not I'm sure they would do it for a small fee.

How can I find a 12A team for him? Is there a big difference between 12A and 12AA? Thanks for the help.

I would say that there is a very big difference between 12A and 12AA.

This is kind of off subject but I would guess that with 7 year olds in our league, 60% will have quit by 12. The ones that do get serious will end up on a competitive tournament team. Once you are out of coaching, and you look back, you'll see that as far as 7/8/9/10 year old youth baseball is concerned "just be fair, make it as fun as possible and work on fundamentals. You want competitive coaching but don't forget to be fair and make it fun, win or lose.

With baseball, the end comes with surprising quickness and finality. For most kids, they are literally playing one day, put the glove and bat away and never touch them again for their lives. When they and you look back on it, the only regrets you will have involve not working hard enough to keep it fun and fair.

I can related to your story very well. I lost count on the number of kids that I have had over to my house and\or ball field for free lessons to work on a weakness they had. More often than not, these weaknesses were centered around the mental side of the game (80% of the game at this age in my opinion), and most all of these extras were on non-practice days. There just isn't enough time to work with individual players (the quality time it requires to really make improvements) during our regular allotted practice time during the season.

How a player responds to a great play is easy, how they respond to a called 3rd strike or ball through the legs is another story.

One of the things that I do (and my top 3 players enjoy doing) is to let them work with the weaker players some time during the practice. Doing this really grows a players confidence in leading, and forms a friendship that is not athletic or performance base with the weaker players.

My son worked with a weaker player on bunting one day, and I overheard him say, "my dad says to square when the pitcher makes his move, but that doesn't work, wait till he releasing the ball, and you will catch everyone back on their heels" he's was only 9 when that happened and I laughed the whole practice