A year ago, a 12-year-old kid stood in at the plate in a Little League game with runners on first and second.
Before he walked up, I called him over to the third base coaching box.
“Remember what we discussed in the dugout,” I told him. “If the first pitch is there, take your big beautiful swing. If it doesn’t work, go back to your line drive swing.”
“Yes coach,” he said.
The opposing manager heard the whole thing from his dugout.
“Yeah,” he said with a laugh, mocking me. “Go up there and swing for the moon.”
I didn’t respond. Didn’t need to.
First pitch. The ball left the yard — a shot well beyond the fence in right center.
I think about that kid a lot lately.
He recently turned 13. He’s done with baseball.
I found out about him and another kid leaving the game on the same day, at a Bar Mitzvah of all places.
The other boy — the one being celebrated — recently decided to walk away from baseball. No going back, his dad said, explaining his new game is golf.
I got to know both those boys well during my son’s last Little League season. I managed a team and the boy who quit the game for golf—I wanted to draft him in the third round and was set to, but the manager in front of me took him. That meant I drafted the other kid, the one who hit the home run.
A lot of us get the car ride home wrong. We don’t mean to, but those moments add pressure, hurt our relationship with our kid, and make the game harder. So I put together a simple 2-minute script—what to say and what to leave unsaid. I’ll send it to you when you subscribe. ↓
The father of the newly minted golfer stood up during the ceremony that morning and told the room about his son’s baseball journey. How he wasn’t a great player when he was young. How he worked at it and worked at it until he became a top player in our local little league
“And I have no doubt you will do the same with golf,” he said.
I loved the message. I didn’t love what it meant.
Later that night I asked his dad what happened.
“He lost the fire,” he told me.
I looked at him and said, “He found a new girlfriend.”
He laughed. “That’s exactly right. He found a new girlfriend.”
Less than an hour later I was catching up with the dad at the same reception whose son hit that home run. It had been about a year since we’d seen each other.
He said his son is burnt out. Tired. Wants to give tackle football a shot.
Two kids. One night. Same decision. It was hard for me to take in because both these boys can play.
A week or so later the golfer was in my truck. He and my son are friends.
“So you’re really done with baseball?” I said.
“Yep,” he said.
“But why?” I asked. “You are a good ballplayer.”
He said he was good in little league but not anymore. He’s one year out of little league and playing in the local rec ball league for teenagers 13 to 16. The field those kids play on looks like a high school field. The mound is further back than little league. The bases are farther apart. And most of the older kids are much bigger than the younger ones.
I wanted to say, You’re not supposed to be good in that league at your age. Ride it out or play travel ball year round. But I looked at him in the rearview mirror and I could see it. He was fine. Reflective. Probably not entirely sure he’d made the right call, but not going back on it either. Not right now.
He had found a new girlfriend.
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A well-known coach shared a statistic recently at a USA Baseball tryout that I continue to think about: 67% of kids quit baseball between the ages of 12 and 13.
It’s hard to believe. It’s also hard to argue with.
The game does get harder at 13. The mound moves back. The bats get heavier. The base paths get longer. Travel rosters thin out. The margins narrow.
But that’s not the whole story.
The kid who hit that home run didn’t lose his ability. He lost something else. The golfer didn’t run out of talent either. His dad said it himself: he worked at it until he became a legit ballplayer.
These aren’t kids who couldn’t hack it. They could. They did. But somewhere between 12 and 13, something around the game stopped being worth it.
The coach in the other dugout — the one who laughed and said “swing for the moon” loud enough to make sure the kid heard it — he wasn’t trying to help. He was performing. That kid cleared the fence on the next pitch.
He’s the same kid who, after I addressed the team before games, would stand up in the dugout and give his own talk. Twelve years old. Nobody asked him to. His teammates listened to every word. The game had given him something real and he knew it.
He’s done with baseball at 13.
The 33% who stay aren’t necessarily more talented. They’re the kids for whom the adults around the game made it worth staying.
The dad at the Bar Mitzvah understood that. He didn’t mourn the game. He honored everything it gave his son — the work, the growth, the becoming — and then he let his son go. No guilt. No pressure. Just pride in who the kid had become and confidence in who he’d be next.
That’s the job. Not to keep kids in baseball. To make the game worth it while they’re in it.
The ones who leave take something with them. The question is whether we gave them enough.
Go Deeper
I coach players and parents to help kids play loose, with confidence and joy. The game gets harder, and our relationships suffer, when we add pressure.
If you’ve gotten the car ride home wrong, caught yourself coaching from the stands, or gotten caught up in the comparison trap, you’re not alone. None of us want to get these moments wrong. The good news: it’s fixable, and it starts with two short guides you can use before your kid’s next game.
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My essays are built around the 5 Moments That Shape Young Ballplayers, from the nerves before a game to the car ride home.
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The travel sports economy has hurt kids in a number of ways, including the idea that failure is something to be immediately fixed rather than an inherent part of the game. I see teens go 0-4 and their parents are on speed dial during the game to their private hitting coach to set up an emergency session. Kids who jump from team to team in travel ball. New bats, $100 batting gloves, all of it filtering the game through a series of financial transactions. With coaches and parents and "experts" at the forefront of the game, rather than the players.
Everyone knows that travel baseball games are essentially meaningless, except for the sales pitch of individual development and exposure. That is baseball without a soul, and of course kids can feel it.
In most communities, baseball as an experience shifts for the worse after little league. That's why kids drop out.
Great piece