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Little League wants all your information

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Re: Little League wants all your information

#61

Post by GeneralMayhem »

jeffgreco wrote: post #58
Turing_Machine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some (including me) would argue that "elite travel teams" and the like should not even exist at this level.

Gotta start disincentivizing this at the public university level.

For baseball, you'd have to do a whole lot more than that. Most top baseball prospects don't go to college at all - they get signed straight out of high school. Kids are getting signed for millions of dollars at age 17 or 18, and baseball is more a skill than a sport. The stakes are ridiculously high: it's a life-changing amount of money, there are only a few spots available (compared to the number of kids who play baseball), and the skill ceiling is basically nonexistent.

Worse, it's a pipelined thing. If you're not already one of the best kids in your area by the time you get to high school, you won't get any playing time, so you won't get scouted. If you aren't one of the best kids in your area by the time you get to travel-ball age, you won't get any playing time, so you won't get the experience to be able to make the high school team. If you don't get on (or fall off of) the fast track, you have absolutely no shot.

Undrafted free agents sometimes make it to the NFL, and walk-ons at the college level aren't unheard of. You can learn basketball up to an NBA level relatively late, so long as you're one of the incredibly few people with the genetics to make that an option. But baseball is so dependent on ingrained muscle-memory and top coaching that you absolutely cannot start playing baseball at a high level late and hope to compete. And as long as there's money in it at the end of the pipe, there will be competition at the beginning of the pipe.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#62

Post by Spooky23 »

_underfl0w_ wrote: post #50
jancsika wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Age is very important for leveling kids appropriately and keeping them safe, which is why birth certificates are required — parents are insane and go to extreme lengths (I personally encountered forged documents, parents who delayed entry into kindergarten to age 6, bogus documents from siblings or cousins, etc) to try to let older kids play in younger levels. This being HN, I figure I can make this criticism and b…

This comment sounds like something Linus Torvalds would say - completely eviscerating but entirely accurate.

The key difference being Linus knows what he’s talking about.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#63

Post by GeneralMayhem »

yTh0rly wrote: post #43
Spooky23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it. I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government g…

I’m curious since you actually went through the effort to be a part of the org: why do we need to formalize everything? Why not just get kids together to play baseball? Why capital Little capital League? Why do we have to normalize towards an organizational system? Academically it all makes sense; our scientific truth must be rigorously vetted. This all just feels like busy work for no gain for most people. I really…

You absolutely can find recreational leagues that are less rigorous - although for safety reasons they'll still tend to be particular about ages. Baseball is a relatively dangerous sport if there's a massive imbalance. It's important that pitch speed, bat speed, reaction times, and overall mass scale up smoothly and roughly uniformly.

The reason why it's so formalized beyond that is that travel ball at 11-12 years old is the beginning of the pipeline to the pros. There are millions of dollars of signing bonuses waiting just a few years down the line, but you don't get drafted unless you're a high school star, and you don't get to play for the high school varsity team unless you're getting the coaching from the top-tier youth leagues.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#64

Post by chrissnell »

Don't always assume bad intent with these sports leagues. I helped my son's tackle football league out with various organizational and website tasks because they didn't have anybody on the board that understood it well. Some parents are just better suited to teaching tackling technique than they are creating a web form that makes sense. I'm guessing that OP's league might be sponsored by the city and the city Parks & Rec staff had some city attorney come up either the requirements for the form and the T&Cs, and I'm guessing that this attorney has no kids in the program and has no internet security experience, either.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#66

Post by throwawayboise »

yTh0rly wrote: post #43
Spooky23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it. I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government g…

I’m curious since you actually went through the effort to be a part of the org: why do we need to formalize everything? Why not just get kids together to play baseball? Why capital Little capital League? Why do we have to normalize towards an organizational system? Academically it all makes sense; our scientific truth must be rigorously vetted. This all just feels like busy work for no gain for most people. I really…

The national league organizations do a lot of good things. I would say that most importantly they have standardized coaching education, e.g. what should kids be learning at each age level. Then locally you have clubs and leagues that operate to schedule games and do all the legwork of reserving time on fields for games and practices, raising funds to pay for it, handling communication with parents, etc.

Sure if you just want to just show up at the park on Saturday afternoon to see who else is there and hit the ball around, you can do that. Without some structure and organization, it will never go beyond that.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#67

Post by kstrauser »

chrissnell wrote: post #64

Don't always assume bad intent with these sports leagues. I helped my son's tackle football league out with various organizational and website tasks because they didn't have anybody on the board that understood it well. Some parents are just better suited to teaching tackling technique than they are creating a web form that makes sense. I'm guessing that OP's league might be sponsored by the city and the city Parks &…

I agree with the sentiment, but this is a national-scale website and not a Django app someone locally tossed online.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#68

Post by chrisseaton »

chrissnell wrote: post #64

Don't always assume bad intent with these sports leagues. I helped my son's tackle football league out with various organizational and website tasks because they didn't have anybody on the board that understood it well. Some parents are just better suited to teaching tackling technique than they are creating a web form that makes sense. I'm guessing that OP's league might be sponsored by the city and the city Parks &…

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?

Re: Little League wants all your information

#69

Post by kstrauser »

throwawayboise wrote: post #48
pridkett wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s referring to strict background checks for the volunteers.

Yes thanks to Larry Nassir and Jerry Sandusky every volunteer parent on every youth sports club is seen as a potential pedophile. Mandatory background checks, mandatory training on bullying, harassment, hazing, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct is now required. It has really made it much more difficult for leagues to get volunteers because though many parents want to help, most don'…

My background check to be an Assistant Scoutmaster was much more rigorous than for any job I’ve ever had. I’m pretty OK with that, too.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#70

Post by dragonwriter »

Spooky23 wrote: post #13
kstrauser wrote: post #2

Oh hey, Hacker News! This is my post. I’m not strictly allergic to proving that I live in a certain place, so long as the evidence is securely deleted afterward. I’m very opposed to the idea that they can share all of those records with any of their partners or sponsors as they see fit. For example, “proof of residency 3” includes financial or medical records. Suppose that Large Corporation donates $1,000 to Little L…

I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it. I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government g…

> Age is very important for leveling kids appropriately and keeping them safe

Size/strength and emotional maturity might be, age is at best a very loose proxy for those which fails quite often.

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