Little League Update, my offer of services

Dear S*, P* and R*,

I thank all of the volunteers, both board members and coaches for their time and love of the game.

My complaints about the lack of equality among the teams in A.L.L. mean nothing if I am unwilling to help create a solution.   What I know about baseball comes from watching 11 years of little league and 3 years of softball.  This translates to “very little”.  That said, I did research and data analysis for 18 years on federally funded R01 grants before returning to pediatric audiology 4 years ago.  I know how to collect data, fact check and create spread-sheets.

I offer you these services so that the skill level of the A.L.L. players will be easier for new coaches to recognize.  I will research the players and create a column on your players list for all coaches to see.  I do believe you need to provide a "Helpful hints card" so that the new coaches know how to do more homework.  (I don’t want to provide hitting stats for example.)

(Optional)  If you would like to make this information easier to gather and much more complete, you could add one question to the Little League application.  “At what skill level does your child currently play baseball?” 

1.       Majors (travel team), 2. Triple A (travel team), 3. Double A (travel team), 4. Single A (travel team), 5. Little League All Star 2014 or 2015 (but no travel team), 6. Average (or slightly above) Little League player, 7. Little League player, but still learning to bat and catch, 8. Never played on a team. 

Collectively, this one question will save hours of our volunteer coaches’ time.

In the middle of our email discussion last week I wished I had not introduced my boys to Little League.  Then I found this picture - check out that smile.

I offer my services because I love my son Joel.  I also offer my services because I care for the boys below and all those not pictured.

Johnston’s Little League [a neighboring city] draft method includes the statement:  “The goal of the draft is to balance the teams as closely as possible.”  Isn’t that what we all want for these kids?

It would be my pleasure to start this process immediately.  I will update this year’s lists to reflect all the data, so that next year, it only needs to be updated.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth McCleary

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In the end the league responded favorably and they will meet in August to discuss changes to be put in place.  I likely will be gathering the travel team data to provide the coaches in the Little League, so that team stacking will stop!  I will let you know next summer if it had any effect in the team fairness.