Learn about Travel Ball and High school Baseball

Clubhouse Gas Casey: Today on Clubhouse Gas we talked to Gary Baldwin about travel baseball versus high school baseball so stay tune. We’re fortunate enough to be joined once again by friend of the show Gary Baldwin. Gary thanks you so much for joining us. Gary: Glad to be here. Casey: Last time we kind of touched a little bit on the travel aspect of East Cobb Baseball. We want to get more into that. We’ve talked a lot of Clubhouse Gas about travel ball of the differences of just regular recreation leagues and travel ball and the differences in travel ball and high school ball. It’s part about talking about the extent to what your teams travel. Gary: Well with 70 teams in this program not all of them traveled a lot some of them don’t travel at all it would be over they get maybe the more they do, we try here not to really talk but it is travel baseball. I’m not real sure what that is but it’s a just different than maybe the leagues you have not played in. Well especially me. When I grew up when it was neighborhood league but we have multiple teams in each age. You know we have 8 12-year-old teams and 8, 13 and 14. I mean it’s actually a league. They play with one another; they just play outside teams also so if that’s makes you travel I guess that’s why they call it test. Casey: About how far do they go I mean and we’re talking about going to Tennessee and playing, we’re talking about going to California and play? Gary: You know some of them depends on each team and what kind of budget they want to have for their team their parents and they might play in Tennessee like Knoxville or something like that or more than likely what they do is play in you know coming you know and for side counting and play South Atlanta or something like that. Casey: Which is not so much travel ball it’s just— Gary: It’s just part of the mood saying that and they go and play and that’s what they do. Casey: Right. Well someone that I find very interesting Gary is I was doing research getting ready to come and talk to you was that each individual team is responsible for their budget. Now as a recreation guy that’s something different for me, something that I would love to hear more about. Talk a little bit about what it takes what it takes for a team to be in charge of the budget and how that works for you here at East Cobb? Gary: Each team here is responsible for what they do. It doesn’t cost a lot to play its $175 a year to play here so each individual team and their parents, they get together they have parents, meetings, and they discuss what it is they want to do. You know what kind of uniforms they want to have, how many games they want to play, where they want to play. So budgets here for teams in this program could be a lot especially the older the team sometimes they do a little bit more counseling markers that are older. They are not very much, so it’s literally up to the team and the parents on the team and what happens with their team. Casey: That sounds fantastic to me as a recreation department guy as old recreation coordinator not having to deal with uniforms and all that stuff and having other people to deal with that for the team. Gary: Yeah. Casey: There’s got to be a big relief off of you and makes it toward you can have these great facilities and freeze you up to do other things. Gary: Sure it’s the best scenario for a team because who knows the team better than the people that are on it and the parents that are supplying the kids so to speak and most of the money, so yeah. Casey: We had a conversation with a lot of high school coaches about the differences in high school ball and travel ball for this conversation. We won’t call it travel ball since that’s not what you all call it but you know exposure wise you know I think I told you earlier about a kid I know off who was a senior at high school. He’s a very good ball player. He played at East Cobb but he also played at high school here in Atlanta and he had to have an arm surgery and they told him he could either have it in the spring or he could have in the summer and he elected to have it during high school season so he would miss the high school season so he would not miss East Cobb season. He felt like he would get better in exposure. Do you feel like the guys get better in exposure playing for you or play for their high school league? Not to get you into trouble. Gary: Well you know my answer to that I’ll try to make it as short as I can. I think both high school and summer are real important. There’s no way that anybody can produce what happens in high school baseball better than high school baseball does. Because you play against you know other schools, you’re playing for your schools, for y our parents. They’re also limited on who they can have whoever goes to that school that’s all they can do. So that’s something I can’t recreate, nobody can, you can’t even be done in college to the same extent it is there so the problem probably more than anything else is that college and high school play at the same time so there’s a limited amount of time that college coaches can get to high school games. It doesn’t mean they don’t but it’s tough. You know most high school coaches you know have 1 day a week to have to be off, I mean like college coaches and they would go to games then but their going to go close. Casey: Right. Gary: Because they can’t go far to see him so what happens in the summer when they can go anywhere they want because they don’t have to worry about coaching the team. It makes it easier for them to recruit. Casey: Well that makes perfect sense because in the summer they’re freed up to do more stuff. Gary: Right. Casey: Gary thank you so much I hope you enjoyed this. Again I would love to talk about what it takes to be coach these high caliber athletes and I’m very interested as a coach to find that out. That will do it for us today. We’ll see you right back here next time for a great edition of Clubhouse Gas.