Letters From an Average Guy

The All-Time Negro Leagues Team, Ranked by the Numbers We Finally Have

Andrew Reed — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 01:33:43 GMT

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Alright, I am back after a two-week vacation with another episode of the All-Time All-Stars by era.

This week we dive into the “Barnstorming” era of the Negro Leagues.

When these men played white major leaguers in the barnstorming games, the ones the commissioner's office kept trying to shut down, the Black teams won the majority of them. They didn't hang close. They won. The only reason we argue about who was better is that one side had the power to stop keeping score.

Now, I had to do this a bit differently since the MLB didn’t fold the stats of Negro League Players until 2024, this WAR doesn’t apply here because it counts a sliver of the games and undersells every man on this list.

Thus, I am ranking documented rate stats and the consensus of the historians who have gone before me to do the digging.

Treat every number below as a floor, not a ceiling. Same roster rules as always: thirteen bats, twelve arms, no DH, no relievers as a category.

Here we go!

The Batting Order

Cool Papa Bell, LF — the fastest man the game has ever seen, switch-hitting from both sides
Willie Wells, SS — five tools and a .943 OPS, tops among shortstops all-time
Oscar Charleston, CF — .363 lifetime; a lot of serious people call him the greatest player who ever lived
Josh Gibson, C — the all-time leader in average, slugging, and OPS, in any league that ever existed, just does not have enough recorded AB’s to be considered.
Buck Leonard, 1B — the Black Lou Gehrig, a .452 on-base machine hitting fifth
Turkey Stearnes, RF — led his league in home runs seven times and talked to his bats
Jud Wilson, 3B — “Boojum,” named for the sound his line drives made off the wall
George Scales, 2B — a .945 OPS batting eighth, which tells you what this lineup is
Satchel Paige, P — the most famous arm in the history of the sport, and he’d tell you so.

Bench: Pop Lloyd, Ray Dandridge, Mule Suttles, Biz Mackey (C).

Staff: Satchel Paige, Smokey Joe Williams, Bullet Rogan, Bill Foster, Leon Day, Ray Brown, Hilton Smith, Dick Redding, José Méndez, Andy Cooper, Slim Jones, Nip Winters.

That three-four-five, Charleston, Gibson, Leonard, is arguably, the best middle-of-the-order in this entire series. Not the best from the Negro Leagues. The best, full stop. Gibson's 1.177 OPS is the highest ever recorded by anyone, and he's hitting cleanup behind a man with a 1.061.

This is the only team in the series that we have to estimate. That’s not on the players at all. It’s on everyone who had a chance to write down the numbers but chose not to.

Written by Andrew Reed —teacher, former high school baseball coach, and dad, covering youth sports and baseball twice a week. New here? Grab my free Youth Sports Parent Guide and subscribe to get both columns each week.

1930s–1940s All-Star Teams: American League vs. National League

Andrew Reed — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:38:29 GMT

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In honor of today’s MLB All-Star game I am giving you arguably the most talented (although the 1950-1969 series may beg to differ) all-star battle in baseball history.

For three straight eras, the National League won this thing on depth. That streak dies here. The 1930s and ‘40s belong to the American League, and it isn’t close.

The rule is simple this time: a man had to play at least half his career between 1930 and 1949. A twenty-year window is forgiving, so most of the giants clear it easily.

The interesting names are the ones who don’t, Stan Musial, Pee Wee Reese, Warren Spahn, and Yogi Berra all lean past 1949, so they wait for the next article.

And by design, every Negro League great, Gibson, Paige, Charleston, Leonard, and the rest, gets a piece of his own (Negro League special in the next article).

Career WAR ranks the hitters, total value the arms, and with no DH the ninth man is a glove. Twelve starters a side. The bullpen still wasn’t a real job.

Here’s why the American League runs away with it. The live-ball offensive explosion flew its flag. Three of the greatest first basemen who ever lived, Gehrig, Foxx, Greenberg, all wore AL wool at once. So did Williams and DiMaggio.

Three All-Star shortstops, three All-Star second basemen, Dickey and Cochrane behind the plate, and Lefty Grove and Bob Feller on the mound.

The National League counters with real greatness, Ott, Mize, Vaughan, Waner, Hubbell, but it’s thinner up the middle and thinner in the rotation. When your bench is Cronin, Boudreau, Gordon, and Cochrane, you’ve already won.

National League

Starting nine: C Gabby Hartnett, 1B Johnny Mize (70.9), 2B Billy Herman (54.7), 3B Stan Hack (52.5), SS Arky Vaughan (78.0), LF Joe Medwick (55.6), CF Paul Waner (72.8), RF Mel Ott (110.8), UT Bill Terry (54.2).

Bench: Bob Elliott (50.6), Ernie Lombardi (46.0), Chuck Klein (43.6), Wally Berger (40.6).

Staff: Carl Hubbell, Dizzy Dean, Bucky Walters, Paul Derringer, Lon Warneke, Claude Passeau, Mort Cooper, Curt Davis, Whit Wyatt, Johnny Vander Meer, Larry French, Van Lingle Mungo.

A former .401 hitter, Bill Terry, is the utility man. That’s a real team.

American League

Starting nine: C Bill Dickey (56.3), 1B Lou Gehrig (113.7), 2B Charlie Gehringer (83.6), 3B Jimmie Foxx (92.8), SS Luke Appling (77.6), LF Ted Williams (121.9), CF Joe DiMaggio (78.3), RF Al Simmons (68.8), UT Hank Greenberg (57.6).

Bench: Joe Cronin (66.4), Lou Boudreau (63.0), Joe Gordon (57.2), Mickey Cochrane (52.1).

Staff: Lefty Grove, Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, Ted Lyons, Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, Wes Ferrell, Tommy Bridges, Bobo Newsom, Dizzy Trout, Spud Chandler, Mel Harder.

Foxx moved to third and Greenberg to utility just to fit the bats in. Two MVPs ride the pine at shortstop. This is the deepest roster in the series.

The Batting Orders

National League

Stan Hack, 3B — Smiling Stan, a .394 on-base leadoff
Billy Herman, 2B — hit-and-run master, ten-time All-Star
Mel Ott, RF — 511 homers, the NL’s answer to Ruth
Johnny Mize, 1B — “The Big Cat,” cleaning up
Joe Medwick, LF — won the Triple Crown in ‘37
Arky Vaughan, SS — a .318 hitter the Hall forgot for decades
Paul Waner, CF — “Big Poison” and 3,152 hits
Gabby Hartnett, C — the 1935 MVP behind the plate
Carl Hubbell, P — the screwball that fooled a generation

American League

Luke Appling, SS — “Old Aches and Pains,” a walk machine
Charlie Gehringer, 2B — the Mechanical Man, .320 lifetime
Ted Williams, LF — the best hitter who ever lived (Or 1A to Ruth, whichever you prefer)
Lou Gehrig, 1B — the Iron Horse, cleanup and captain
Jimmie Foxx, 3B — 534 homers, moved across for his bat
Joe DiMaggio, CF — a 56-game streak, hitting sixth here
Al Simmons, RF — “Bucketfoot Al,” .334 for his career
Bill Dickey, C — seven rings and a .313 average
Lefty Grove, P — 300 wins and the era’s meanest fastball

Three times the deeper league beat the more brilliant one. This time they’re the same league.

The National League invented the template for winning on depth and in the one era that mattered most for hitting, the American League stole it, then stacked Ruth’s heirs on top.

A DiMaggio hitting sixth. A .401 hitter carrying the water bucket. There’s no answer for that.

AL wins this round.

But the NL maintains a 2-1 series lead.

Stay tuned for the Negro League All-Stars (1920-1949) and then back to the post-integration NL vs AL battle for the era of 1950-1969

1920s All-Star Teams: American League vs. National League

Andrew Reed — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:38:18 GMT

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The 1920s belong to the American League. Ruth, Murderers’ Row, the Yankee dynasty, the whole live-ball revolution, it all flew the AL flag. So here’s the twist: enforce the rules and the National League wins this one too.

Start with the rules, because a ten-year window breaks the one I used for the dead-ball piece. “Majority of career in the era” throws Babe Ruth out of his own decade, he played only about 45 percent of his seasons in the 1920s.

So eligibility here means a man’s prime and the bulk of his value landed between 1920 and 1929. Position players ranked on career WAR, pitchers on total value, league assigned by where they spent the decade.

No DH, so the ninth regular is a utility bat. And no relievers, the fireman wasn’t a job yet, so twelve starters a side.

That one eligibility rule guts the American League from both ends.

It strips the 1910s holdovers off the top, Cobb, Speaker, Collins, Walter Johnson all belong to the dead-ball team.

It strips the kids off the bottom, Gehrig, Foxx, Simmons, Gehringer, Cochrane, and Lefty Grove all did their real damage in the 1930s.

What’s left is Ruth, gloriously alone, propped up by a wall of corner sluggers and almost nothing up the middle.

The National League’s stars actually clustered in the decade, Hornsby, Frisch, a deep and durable rotation, so once again it’s the steadier roster.

The Batting Orders

National League

Max Carey, CF — led the league in steals ten times
Dave Bancroft, SS — switch-hitting spark, glove of the decade
Rogers Hornsby, 2B — hit .400 three times in these ten years
Jim Bottomley, 1B — the 1928 MVP and RBI machine
Kiki Cuyler, RF — speed and pop, peaked at .354
Zack Wheat, LF — Brooklyn’s steady .317 lifer
Frankie Frisch, 3B — the Fordham Flash, fearless both ways
Bob O’Farrell, C — a 1926 MVP hitting eighth
Dazzy Vance, P — struck out the NL seven straight years
Bench: Travis Jackson (43.9), Hack Wilson (38.8), Pie Traynor (36.2), Jimmie Wilson (C).
Staff: Dazzy Vance, Eppa Rixey, Burleigh Grimes, Dolf Luque, Jesse Haines, Art Nehf, Ray Kremer, Pete Donohue, Bill Sherdel, Vic Aldridge, Jimmy Ring, Johnny Morrison.
Hornsby at second, Frisch slid to third so both bats play, and Pie Traynor, the decade's signature third baseman, riding the bench. That's depth.

American League

Joe Sewell, SS — struck out once every 63 at-bats
George Sisler, 1B — hit .407 and .420, no misprint
Babe Ruth, RF — the best who ever lived, next question
Harry Heilmann, LF — four batting titles, all in odd years
Goose Goslin, OF — Washington’s one true slugger
Wally Schang, C — switch-hitting and patient before it was cool
Willie Kamm, 3B — the finest glove at third, bar none
Bucky Harris, 2B — the Boy Manager who won it all in ‘24
Red Faber, P — a spitballer grandfathered past the ban
Bench: Joe Judge (44.9), Earle Combs (43.9), Ken Williams (33.0), Steve O'Neill (C).
Staff: Red Faber, Stan Coveleski, Urban Shocker, George Uhle, Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, Carl Mays, Sad Sam Jones, Eddie Rommel, Bob Shawkey, Howard Ehmke, Bullet Joe Bush.
Ruth, Heilmann, Goslin, Rice, Sisler, five great bats and not one of them a natural center fielder or middle infielder. The AL is all corner, no core.

The National League bats nine deep and pitches four aces. The American League bats three deep, then holds its breath. In the one decade the AL owned, the calendar handed most of its legends to the neighbors, the old ones to the dead-ball club, the young ones to the ‘30s. Ruth got left holding the bag. Even he can’t carry it alone.

Why Your Youth Athlete Needs an Off-Season, Even If Everyone Else Is Still Playing

Andrew Reed — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 16:25:32 GMT

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My house sounds like a war zone right now. Two ten-year-olds and a sixteen-year-old, all off school, all circling each other looking for something to do. The boredom set in about four days into summer. And every instinct I have as a parent, and every ad in my inbox for another skills camp and another travel tournament, tells me to fix it by signing them up for more sports.

I’m not going to. Neither should you.

Here’s the thing most youth sports parents never hear: the off-season isn’t wasted time. It’s where development actually happens. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that young athletes take two to three months off from any single sport every year, plus one to two full rest days every week.¹ Not off from movement, off from the sport. There’s a difference, and it matters.

What an off-season should actually look like

Rest doesn’t mean the couch. It means giving the throwing arm, or the kicking leg, or the overworked shoulder a break while the rest of the athlete keeps growing. Build the months around three things:

General athleticism. Swimming, speed and agility work, bike rides, pickup games in the yard. Different movements load different joints and build the coordination one sport can’t.²
Strength and conditioning. Age-appropriate strength work builds the durable base that prevents injury when the season ramps back up.³
Free play and camps. Unstructured, kid-led, no scoreboard. This is where creativity and love of the game get rebuilt, the stuff that burns off during a long competitive season.
Family and vacations come first. Let’s face it, even if you or your child love sports, there are bigger things than the game. Family is one of them. Don’t let the sport, training, etc. interfere with family vacations. If your child misses a fun vacation for a tournament, your child will grow to resent the sport. The sport isn’t their job.

The one thing the off-season should not include: more games.

Why this isn’t optional

Overuse injuries account for nearly half of all youth sports injuries, and the single biggest predictor is volume, how much repetitive sport-specific activity a kid racks up.⁴ Seventy percent of kids quit organized sports by age 13, and burnout from year-round grind is a leading reason why.⁵ A season off isn’t falling behind. It’s the thing that keeps them in the game long enough to matter.

So let them be bored this week. Hand them a bike, a pool pass, a glove and no agenda.

Heck, if we give collegiate and professional athletes an off-season, why cant we do that for our kids?

The scoreboard can wait until fall.

Notes

“Professionalization of Youth Sports Can Lead to Burnout: Why Athletes Need Time Off,” AAP News, American Academy of Pediatrics, January 22, 2024, https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/27833/Professionalization-of-youth-sports-can-lead-to.
“Preventing Overuse Injuries in Young Athletes,” Cleveland Clinic, accessed June 2026, https://health.clevelandclinic.org/preventing-overuse-injuries-young-athletes.
“Preventing Overuse Injuries in Youth Sports,” Mass General Brigham, September 15, 2023, https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/about/newsroom/articles/preventing-overuse-injuries-in-youth-sports.
“Overuse Injury Prevention in Youth Sports,” UC Davis Health, February 10, 2022, https://health.ucdavis.edu/sports-medicine/resources/youth-injury-prevention.
AAP News, “Professionalization of Youth Sports.”

Dead-Ball Era All-Star Teams: National League vs. American League

Andrew Reed — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:06:25 GMT

Ok. Last week, I had a great response to my All-Time MLB Roster article. I did receive some pushback on the exclusion of certain players but it was constructive and welcomed. Overall, that as a fun and engaging post.

I mentioned in the article that I would continuing to do this by eras. I am starting from the earliest known era and working toward the most recent.

I begin with the Deadball Era (with a caveat).

Build a team from the Dead-Ball Era and the first problem hits before you pick a single player. The American League didn’t exist until 1901. The entire 1890s belongs to the National League. That isn’t a quirk to wave off. It’s the reason one roster runs deep and the other runs thin.

The rules were simple. Position players ranked on career WAR. Pitchers on total career value. Every man had to play the majority of his career between 1890 and 1919. The league-jumpers, Cy Young, Lajoie, Crawford, Keeler, went where they spent the most seasons.

Two calls worth flagging. No DH means the pitcher hits, so my ninth regular isn’t a bat in the field. He’s a utility man too good to sit. And I won’t staple 107 WAR to the bench, so Nap Lajoie slides across to first in the American League. Relievers don’t appear anywhere. The job didn’t exist yet.

National League

The batting order

Billy Hamilton (CF) — “Sliding Billy” scored 198 runs in 1894, a record no one has come within forty of since.
Willie Keeler (RF) — “Wee Willie” coined “hit ‘em where they ain’t” and ran it out to a .341 average and a 44-game hitting streak.
Honus Wagner (SS) — The Flying Dutchman won eight batting titles and still grades out as the best shortstop who ever lived.
Fred Clarke (LF) — A player-manager who starred in left and ran the Pirates to four pennants and the 1909 title.
Jake Beckley (1B) — A quiet workhorse who finished with 2,938 hits and still owns the career record for putouts at first base.
George Davis (3B) — A switch-hitting infielder lost to history for decades, whose 84.7 WAR ranks among the best ever at the position.
Bid McPhee (2B) — The last great bare-handed fielder, he didn’t strap on a glove until 1896 and remained the era’s best gloveman at second.
Roger Bresnahan (C) — The Duke of Tralee caught for McGraw’s Giants and put the first shin guards on a big-league catcher in 1907
Pitcher

Bench: Ed Delahanty (69.7), Jesse Burkett (62.6), Joe Tinker (53.2), Johnny Kling (29.5).

This team tilts left at the top. Against a tough left-hander, slide Davis up to second and drop Keeler down.

The staff

Cy Young — 511 wins, an unbreakable number, and the award every pitcher now chases.
Kid Nichols — Won 361 games and reached 300 younger than anyone in history.
Pete Alexander — Old Pete threw 90 career shutouts, still a National League record, and won three pitching Triple Crowns.
Christy Mathewson — The college-bred “Big Six” tossed three shutouts in the 1905 World Series and made the position respectable.
Amos Rusie — The “Hoosier Thunderbolt” threw so hard the league moved the rubber back to 60 feet, 6 inches.
Vic Willis — A horse who won 249 games and once completed 45 starts in a single season.
Joe McGinnity — “Iron Man” won both ends of a doubleheader three times in one month.
Three Finger Brown — A farm accident left him a mangled hand and a wicked curve, and a 1.04 ERA in 1906.
Babe Adams — A rookie who won three games in the 1909 World Series and walked almost no one his entire career.
Wilbur Cooper — Still the winningest left-hander in Pittsburgh Pirates history.
Hippo Vaughn — The Cub on the wrong end of the only double no-hitter in major league history, in 1917.
Noodles Hahn — A Cincinnati lefty who piled up strikeouts and 100-plus wins before his arm gave out at 27.

American League (1901–1919)

The batting order:

Eddie Collins (2B) — “Cocky” banked 3,315 hits, a .333 average, and a reputation as the smartest baserunner alive.

Tris Speaker (LF) — The “Grey Eagle” played the shallowest center field ever and owns the all-time record with 792 doubles.
Ty Cobb (CF) — The “Georgia Peach” won twelve batting titles and walked away with a .366 average no one has touched since.
Sam Crawford (RF) — “Wahoo Sam” hit 309 triples, a record that may outlive the sport itself.
Frank “Home Run” Baker (3B) — Earned the name with two clutch shots in the 1911 Series and led the league in homers four straight years.
Nap Lajoie (1B) — Hit a modern-record .426 in 1901 and was so beloved Cleveland renamed the team the Naps for him.
Bobby Wallace (SS) — A converted pitcher who became the smoothest defensive shortstop of the era over a 25-year career.
Ray Schalk (C) — A defensive innovator who caught four no-hitters and was one of the “Clean Sox” in 1919.

Three left-handed bats start the order, and they’re three of the best hitters who ever lived — you live with it.

Bench: “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (62.2), Harry Hooper (53.4), Elmer Flick (53.2), Donie Bush (44.4), Lou Criger (14.0).

The staff

Walter Johnson — “The Big Train” won 417 games and threw 110 shutouts, both untouchable today.
Eddie Plank — The first left-hander to 300 wins, and famous for taking forever between pitches to get there.
Ed Walsh — His 1.82 career ERA is the lowest in major league history, built on a filthy spitball.
Rube Waddell — A brilliant, troubled strikeout artist who’d leave the mound to chase a passing fire truck.
Eddie Cicotte — A knuckleball master whose career and good name died in the 1919 fix.
Jack Powell — Won 245 games for mostly dreadful teams, which is why he also lost 254.
George Mullin — A Detroit innings-eater who threw a no-hitter on his own birthday in 1912.
Addie Joss — Threw a perfect game and posted the second-lowest ERA ever before dying at 31.
Doc White — A White Sox lefty who once fired five consecutive shutouts in 1904.
Chief Bender — Connie Mack’s answer when a game had to be won: “If I had to win one, I’d want Bender pitching it.”
Jack Chesbro — Won 41 games in 1904, a modern record that will never fall.
Smoky Joe Wood — Went 34-5 in 1912 with a fastball Walter Johnson envied, then blew out his arm and became an outfielder.

Cobb, Speaker, Crawford, and Jackson in one outfield. Walter Johnson at the front. Then look at catcher and first base. The American League’s depth is all grass, no dirt.

One league is nine deep. The other is four legends and a prayer. That’s not a talent gap. It’s the calendar. The AL was nine years old when the era ended.

Who wins?

The Death of the Sandlot: Why Unstructured Play Is Disappearing and What It's Costing Young Athletes

Andrew Reed — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 15:35:25 GMT

Drive past a park on a Saturday and count the kids playing a game no adult organized. You won’t need many fingers. The sandlot game, bases made of t-shirts, arguments settled without a rulebook, teams picked by the kids themselves, is essentially extinct. We traded it for travel rosters, 7 a.m. tournament check-ins, and most annoyingly: video games and social media.

I grew up in the ‘90s, when “go outside and be home by dark” was the whole parenting philosophy. That wasn’t neglect. It was the most important athletic training I ever got, and nobody knew it at the time.

Unstructured pickup games made learning a sport fun — football, baseball, home run derby, basketball, whatever was in season. In the Maryland winters, we strapped on all our heavy snow gear to use as pads and went at it like the Packers and Bears. Skill development, exercise, and loads of vitamin D, all at once.

Now? Forcing my own kids outside is an exercise in futility. And even when they want to go out, their friends don’t. The neighborhoods sit silent.

I see it as a teacher, too, this same lack of interest in outdoor play, the same pull toward video games, runs straight through Gen Z and now Gen Alpha. There’s more to that story, but it’ll keep for another article. Today I want to focus on the athletic cost.

The numbers tell the story. Compared to kids in the 1970s, today’s children spend 50 percent less time in unstructured outdoor play.¹ One University of Michigan analysis found the average American child between 6 and 17 gets about seven minutes a day of it.² Seven minutes.

And here’s what that costs a young ballplayer.

Adult-free play builds the things coaches can’t.

When kids run their own games, three things happen that no practice plan replicates:

Reps without pressure. No coach watching, no parent filming, no scoreboard. Kids try the risky throw, the behind-the-back flip, the swing they’d never attempt with a clipboard staring at them. That’s how skill compounds, through volume and failure nobody’s grading.
Problem-solving and creativity. A classic 1973 study found kids who played freely with objects generated three times as many creative uses for them as kids who were shown what to do.³ Self-directed play is where executive function, decision-making, and improvisation actually develop.⁴
Real social development. When there’s no ref, kids have to make the call, argue it, and live with it. They learn conflict resolution, leadership, and how to keep a game going when it’d be easier to quit.⁵

The American Academy of Pediatrics now formally urges parents and doctors to protect unstructured playtime, not as a nice-to-have, but as a developmental necessity tied to everything from motor skills to lifelong health.⁶

Here’s the uncomfortable part for those of us who love organized ball: you cannot coach your way to what the backyard gives for free. The travel team, the lessons, the showcases, none of it replaces a kid inventing a game and figuring out how to win it on his own.

So here’s my advice, and it costs nothing. This week, send your kid outside with a ball and no instructions. No drills, no feedback, no “keep your elbow up.” Let them be bored. Let them invent something. Let them argue about whether the tennis ball off the garage was foul.

That’s not time off from development.

That is the development.

AI assisted with the research, editing, and source formatting for this article. The writing and ideas are my own.

Notes

“The Loss of Children’s Play: A Public Health Issue,” citing a 50 percent decline in unstructured outdoor activity versus the 1970s, MIT (FEE readings), accessed June 2026, https://web.mit.edu/writing/2016/FEE/July2016/Readings/Health_brief.pdf.
“The Consequences of Children Spending Less Time Outdoors,” Michigan State University Extension, citing University of Michigan Institute for Social Research data (approximately seven minutes per day of unstructured outdoor play), https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_consequences_of_children_spending_less_time_outdoors.
“Unstructured Play Is Critical to Child Development,” Scientific American, February 20, 2024 (1973 Developmental Psychology study; free-play group generated three times as many creative uses), https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unstructured-play-is-critical-to-child-development/.
“The Essential Benefits of Play: A Research-Based Perspective,” Waldorf Education North America, February 23, 2026 (play and executive function development), https://www.waldorfeducation.org/the-essential-benefits-of-play-a-research-based-perspective/.
“The Decline of Unstructured Play,” The Genius of Play (conflict resolution, leadership, self-regulation), https://www.thegeniusofplay.org/genius/expert-advice/articles/the-decline-of-unstructured-play.aspx.
Yogman et al., “The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children,” Pediatrics (American Academy of Pediatrics), September 2018, https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/142/3/e20182058/38649/

The All-Time MLB Roster

Andrew Reed — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:01:45 GMT

If you liked this article, you can support me with a tip at Buy Me a Coffee…in other words, TIP!

Greatness gets argued. I’d rather measure it. For fun, I put my analytics and coaching hat on to construct my all-time MLB team.

Position players made this roster on career WAR. Pitchers made it on total body of work. No nostalgia, no reputation, no hometown discounts.

I borrowed the All-Star format for the size, nine starters, eleven reserves, because when you’re drafting from everyone who ever played, you leave room on the bench.

The Starting Nine

LF — Barry Bonds (162.8): The most valuable hitter in history. Argue the era; you can’t argue the number.

CF — Willie Mays (156.2): Five tools, zero holes. The most complete player the game ever produced.

RF — Babe Ruth (162.3): A 162-WAR bat who was also an ace. There is no second place.

3B — Mike Schmidt (106.9): 548 homers and ten Gold Gloves. The best third baseman, full stop.

SS — Honus Wagner (130.8): 130 WAR in the dead-ball era. Drop him in any decade and he dominates it.

2B — Rogers Hornsby (127.3): Hit .424 in 1924. The best right-handed hitter who ever lived.

1B — Lou Gehrig (113.7): Twelve straight seasons above 8 WAR. The Iron Horse takes the bag over Pujols.

C — Johnny Bench (75.1): Reinvented the position’s defense and still hit 389 homers. The standard.

DH — Ted Williams (122.1): Bonds was the better all-around player, so he’s in left. But the best pure hitter who ever lived has to hit somewhere. He’s my DH.

The Bench

Gary Carter (70.1): MVP bat, elite glove. The best backup catcher imaginable.

Albert Pujols (101.5): 700 homers and a decade of dominance. He starts on any other roster.

Eddie Collins (124.4): 124 WAR, 3,315 hits. The math never forgot him.

Cal Ripken Jr. (95.9): 2,632 straight games. He changed what a shortstop could look like.

Ty Cobb (149.8): A .366 average and 149 WAR, on the bench. That’s this roster.

Eddie Mathews (96.1): 512 homers from the hot corner. A reserve who’d anchor most franchises.

Mickey Mantle (110.2): Switch-hitting power that broke ballparks. Now imagine him healthy.

Hank Aaron (143.2): 755 homers and 143 WAR coming off the pine. Let that sit.

Tris Speaker (136.1): 3,514 hits and the best center-field glove of his era.

Frank Thomas (73.8): The Big Hurt. The most feared DH ever, he sits only because Williams exists.

The Rotation

Walter Johnson, RHP (155.4): 417 wins, 110 shutouts. The Big Train fronts any staff ever built.

Roger Clemens, RHP (138.7): Seven Cy Youngs across two decades and two leagues.

Pedro Martínez, RHP (83.9): The greatest peak any arm ever had. His 2000 season stands alone.

Randy Johnson, LHP (101.1): Six-foot-ten of menace. Five Cy Youngs, 4,875 strikeouts.

Tom Seaver, RHP (106.0): 311 wins and the cleanest power mechanics the game has seen.

The Bullpen

Greg Maddux, LR (106.6): A surgeon with a baseball. Four straight Cy Youngs, working as my long man.

Cy Young, LR (165.9): 511 wins, the award bears his name, and he’s my long reliever. That’s the depth here.

Hoyt Wilhelm, MR (50.1): A knuckleball that lasted until he was 49.

Billy Wagner, MR (27.7): 100 mph from a small lefty frame. 1,196 strikeouts in 903 innings.

Trevor Hoffman, MR (28.0): 601 saves and the deadliest changeup of his generation.

Dennis Eckersley, SU (62.6): An ace turned revolutionary closer. He sets the table for the ninth.

Mariano Rivera, CR (56.3): One pitch. 652 saves. Baseball’s only unanimous Hall of Famer. Game over.

Batting Order

Barry Bonds (L) — .444 career OBP, north of .500 at his peak, with real speed earlier on. The leadoff spot banks the most at-bats; I want my best on-base threat turning the lineup over and standing on first for the wrecking crew.
Rogers Hornsby (R) — .434 OBP, .577 slug, a .358 lifetime average. My best right-handed bat goes in the premium 2-hole, and he breaks up the lefties between Bonds and the heart of the order.
Babe Ruth (L) — the best hitter who ever lived hits third. This is literally Murderers’ Row, and I’m not going to outsmart 1927.
Lou Gehrig (L) — the greatest run producer in history hits cleanup behind Ruth. That back-to-back is the most feared sequence the game has ever seen. Pitch around Ruth and Gehrig makes you pay.
Ted Williams (L) — yes, a .482 OBP hitting fifth. With this group somebody elite has to, and Williams as a second wave means there is no soft spot to navigate to. He keeps the line moving and clears the bases when 2-3-4 reach.
Willie Mays (R) — a five-tool, 660-homer Hall of Famer batting sixth, and he breaks up the lefties again.
Mike Schmidt (R) — 548 homers and the best glove on the field hitting seventh. That’s the depth.
Honus Wagner (R) — .391 OBP and 700-plus steals deep in the order acts as a second leadoff man, getting on and turning it back over to Bonds.
Johnny Bench (R) — the “weakest” bat is a 389-homer, two-time MVP catcher. Every pitcher who gets through the top eight still has to deal with him before they exhale.

So, over the next few weeks I am going to put an all-time out for each era. Stay tuned!

Now, the question is, who will manage this team?

The Youth Baseball Metric Trap: Why Exit Velocity and Launch Angle Don't Matter Yet

Andrew Reed — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 20:29:03 GMT

There’s a ten-year-old at a tournament this weekend whose dad knows his average exit velocity off the tee. Not his name-the-pitch-count knowledge. Not whether he can lay off a bad pitch. His exit velo. Measured by a $200 sensor strapped to a bat he hasn’t grown into yet.

This is where we are now. Trackman numbers and Blast Motion swing scores for kids who still believe in the tooth fairy.

I coached high school baseball for six years, and I’ll tell you what I think every parent of a ballplayer 8-14 should know: you’re measuring the wrong end of the swing.

The metrics you love are downstream

Exit velocity, launch angle, batting average, slugging, these do matter. At sixteen. At eighteen. In a college showcase. But every one of them is a result, not a skill. You cannot coach a kid into a 90-mph exit velo if he’s lunging at pitches off the plate. In fact, having a 90-mph exit velo is worthless if you’re swinging at pitches outside of the zone. The output is built on inputs nobody’s tracking.

A ten-year-old chasing a ball in the dirt can’t “fix his launch angle.” That’s not his problem. His problem is upstream, and it’s the only place worth coaching.

The three pillars that actually matter at 8–14

Quality At-Bats. A strikeout isn’t automatically a failure. Did he foul off two nasty pitches? Did he run the count full and make the pitcher work? Reward the battle, not just the box score. The kid who fights for eight pitches and walks did more than the kid who yanked the first pitch for a lucky single.
Zone Literacy. Not just where’s the strike zone but where’s his zone. Every hitter has hot spots. Teach him to hunt those early in the count and protect everything with two strikes. Discipline is a skill you build at nine, not a switch you flip at fifteen. As Barry Bonds once said, it’s much harder for a pitcher to throw the ball 60’ 6” (or 45 feet for youth players) consistently over a 17-inch plate. Make him throw it where you want it.
Barrel Contact. Did he hit it flush? Sweet spot, hard, square, regardless of whether it found a glove. Line drives caught at short are good swings. Bloops that drop are not. Coach the contact, not the luck.

Get these three right and the exit velocity comes on its own, later, when his body’s ready to produce it.

So next time you’re behind the backstop, stop watching where the ball lands. Watch the pitches he doesn’t swing at.

Did Walter Johnson and Bob Feller Really Throw 100 MPH? The Pre-Radar-Gun Velocity Debate

Andrew Reed — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 20:50:35 GMT

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How do you clock a fastball before the radar gun existed?

That’s not rhetorical. The radar gun didn’t reach baseball until 1973, when Michigan State coach Danny Litwhiler borrowed police speed technology to time his pitchers.¹ Nolan Ryan got the first official in-game triple-digit reading the next year, clocked at 100.8 mph in 1974.² Everything before that, every story about Walter Johnson and Bob Feller scorching a catcher’s palm, comes to us with no number attached. So people went looking for one.

Did the best hitters of yesteryear face the velocity of today and how do we know?

The methods were stranger than the myths.

The munitions lab

In 1912, Walter Johnson walked into the Remington Arms plant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a place built to test bullets, not baseballs. As guest contributor Joseph Wallace recounted for SABR, Baseball Magazine‘s editors had engineers string a wire mesh in a wooden frame and bolt a steel plate to the wall behind it; Johnson threw through the mesh, the ball struck the plate, and the apparatus measured the time between the two impacts.³ The result was 122 feet per second, about 83 mph. A second test at the same lab in 1917 clocked him at 134 feet per second, or 91.36 mph.⁴

Sounds slow. Hold that thought.

The motorcycle and the artillery gun

Bob Feller got the showman’s treatment. In 1940, on a closed street in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, a police motorcycle blew past him at 86 mph with a ten-foot head start, and Feller, in a suit and wingtips, tried to beat it to a paper target downrange. As Tim Wendel tells it in High Heat, the producer ran the math and announced 104 mph.⁵

Feller didn’t fully trust it. So in 1946 he tried again, firing roughly thirty pitches through a Lumiline chronograph on loan from the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, the same photoelectric rig used to time artillery shells. By Feller’s own account, he made Senators owner Clark Griffith pay him $700 before he’d throw; he was nobody’s free exhibition. The machine read 98.6 mph.⁶

The legends with no numbers

Then there’s everyone who never got near a chronograph. Smoky Joe Wood, of whom Johnson himself reportedly said that no man alive threw harder. Satchel Paige, whose fastball was a folk tale long before it was ever a measurement, by the time radar caught him in 1952, he was 46 and sitting at 91 mph.⁷ These are the names that power the bar arguments, and they’re exactly the ones we have no evidence for. The engineering tests, crude as they were, are the only honest record we’ve got.

Now the part that changes everything

Here’s the nuance the “they only threw 90” crowd skips. Those old contraptions clocked the ball near home plate, after fifty-some feet of air resistance had bled speed off it. Modern radar reads velocity about ten feet out of the hand, before the ball slows down. The physicists behind the 2016 documentary Fastball pegged the loss at roughly one mph for every 5.5 feet.⁸

Run the conversion. Johnson’s 83.2 mph at the plate climbs to 93.8 at the hand. Feller’s 98.6 jumps to 107.6, that “impossible” number people laughed off for decades turns out to be the release reading. Suddenly the legends and the engineering stop arguing and start agreeing.

So were they throwing 100? By the only measurement that counts today, the one taken at the hand, the evidence says yes. At least a few of them were, with equipment built for bullets and a farm kid in wingtips outracing a Harley.

We spent a century assuming the old-timers were slower than us.

Turns out we were just measuring them at the wrong end of the pitch.

A note on process: I used an AI assistant to help gather sources, verify historical details, and format citations for this article. The thesis, interpretation, final editorial decisions are my own, and the writing is mine. The AI was a research tool, not the author.

Notes

“How Fast Are Pitchers Throwing? A Look at Speed Measurement in Baseball,” Baseball History Comes Alive, September 25, 2019, https://www.baseballhistorycomesalive.com/how-fast-are-pitchers-throwinga-look-at-speed-measurement-in-baseball/.
“Who Threw the First 100 MPH Pitch?,” Metro League, November 19, 2023, https://www.metroleague.org/who-threw-the-first-100-mph-pitch/.
Joseph Wallace, “The First Baseball Speed Gun,” Goodreads (author blog), accessed June 16, 2026, https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/8285613-the-first-baseball-speed-gun.
The 1917 Bridgeport, Connecticut munitions-laboratory test recorded Johnson’s fastball at 134 feet per second (91.36 mph); see “The Science Behind the Fastball,” Calgary Herald (review of the documentary Fastball), March 25, 2016, https://www.pressreader.com/canada/calgary-herald/20160325/281943132011418.
Tim Wendel, “Bob Feller’s Famous Motorcycle Test,” HuffPost, May 25, 2011, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bob-fellers-famous-motorc_b_797564.
Bob Feller, quoted in “Fastest Pitch Speed in Major League Baseball,” eFastball.com, accessed June 16, 2026, https://www.efastball.com/baseball/stats/fastest-pitch-speed-in-major-leagues/ (Feller’s account of the 1946 Aberdeen Proving Ground “Lumiline” test and the $700 negotiated from Clark Griffith); see also “On Bob Feller’s Birthday, We Remember the Time His Fastball Was Measured by Army Equipment,” MLB.com Cut4, for the 98.6 mph reading.
“Who Threw the First 100 MPH Pitch?,” Metro League.
“The Science Behind the Fastball,” Calgary Herald, March 25, 2016 (documentary Fastball: conversion of roughly 1 mph per 5.5 feet; Johnson 83.2 → 93.8 mph, Feller 98.6 → 107.6 mph).

A Baseball-Only Elementary School? Why My Florida District's New Microschool Reinforces the Specialization Trap

Andrew Reed — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 16:18:15 GMT

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Let me lead with the part that might surprise you: I’m glad my district wants kids moving. Orange County Public Schools in my home state of Florida (and also the district in which I teach and my kids attend school) is opening a tuition-free baseball and softball “microschool” at Cheney Elementary in August 2026, about 48 students in grades 3 through 6, two certified teachers, two coaches, and a schedule with more than two hours of athletic training three days a week (Cheney Elementary, OCPS).

As a coach and a parent, I love the instinct. Elementary schools should have organized sports. Movement builds healthier, sharper, happier kids.

But an entire elementary school built around one sport is the specialization trap wearing a cap and gown.

Here’s the problem, and it isn’t subtle. Everything we know about athletic development points the same way: kids who sample many sports become better athletes, get hurt less, and stay in the game longer.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against specializing before age 12 to 13, citing higher rates of overuse injury and burnout (Brenner, Pediatrics, 2016). A survey of more than 3,000 athletes found the ones who actually made it specialized later than the high schoolers chasing them (Buckley et al., Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, 2017). And specialized young athletes carry a 36 percent higher risk of serious overuse injury (Jayanthi et al., American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2015).

We’re talking about eight-, nine-, and ten-year-olds. These are the exact ages the research says to keep wide open.

Now picture the daily reality. A nine-year-old at this school spends his structured movement time on baseball. Not soccer or football in the fall, basketball in the winter, track in the spring. Baseball. The institution itself has quietly told a third-grader this is his sport now. That’s a remarkable thing to decide on behalf of a kid who hasn’t lost all his baby teeth.

I want to be fair, because the design is thoughtful. It’s tuition-free, this isn’t the pay-to-play travel model that prices families out. The academics are aligned to state standards. The adult-to-student ratio is excellent. If OCPS had built a multi-sport elementary school, where kids rotate through five or six sports a year and learn to love movement itself, I’d be writing a rave instead of a caution.

And the fix really is that simple. Keep the tuition-free model. Keep the coaches, the fields, the training time. Just widen the menu. Don’t sort children by sport before they’re old enough to know what they’ll love at fifteen.

Build the school. Please build the school. Then let kids play everything in it.

Because the goal at this age was never to manufacture baseball players. It was to make athletes and, more than that, kids who still want to be playing something at all when they’re thirteen.

Sources

Cheney Elementary, “Baseball & Softball Microschool Information,” Orange County Public Schools, accessed June 2026. https://cheneyes.ocps.net/406979_2
Brenner, Joel S., and AAP Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness. “Sports Specialization and Intensive Training in Young Athletes.” Pediatrics, 2016.
Buckley, Patrick S., et al. “Early Single-Sport Specialization: A Survey of 3090 High School, Collegiate, and Professional Athletes.” Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, 2017.
Jayanthi, Neeru, et al. “Sports-Specialized Intensive Training and the Risk of Injury in Young Athletes.” American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2015.

Barry Bonds' 2004 Season: The Greatest Display of Plate Discipline in Baseball History

Andrew Reed — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:06:14 GMT

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A .609 on-base percentage is not a typo. It happened. In 2004, Barry Bonds reached base more than three out of every five times he came to the plate, the highest single-season on-base percentage in the history of Major League Baseball.¹ Ted Williams never touched it. Babe Ruth never touched it. For one impossible summer, the most feared hitter who ever lived turned plate discipline into a weapon nobody had ever seen wielded that way.

Start with the walks, because that’s where the story lives. Bonds drew 232 of them, a single-season record that still stands, shattering the old mark of 177 set by Ruth in 1923.² Of those, 120 were intentional, nearly doubling the previous record of 68, which Bonds also held.³ Pitchers were so terrified of him that they handed him first base on purpose 120 times, including at least once with the bases loaded. Read that again. A manager looked at a bases-loaded situation and decided a guaranteed run was the safer option.

Now pair that batting eye with the fact that he almost never missed. Bonds struck out just 41 times all season.⁴ His 2004 is the only qualified season in baseball history in which a player drew more than twice as many intentional walks as strikeouts.⁵ He had 45 home runs and only 41 strikeouts. The most dangerous power hitter on earth was also, simultaneously, the most disciplined contact hitter on earth. Those two things are not supposed to coexist.

The slash line is incredible: .362/.609/.812.⁶ The slugging percentage alone, .812, would headline most Hall of Fame careers. Bonded to that .609 OBP, it produced a 1.422 OPS, the highest single-season mark ever recorded.⁷ His first-half OPS of 1.421 was the best half-season in history, and he set the record by sixty points over Ruth’s best.⁸ Sixty points is not a margin. It’s a canyon.

Then come the metrics built to strip away era and ballpark. Bonds posted a 263 OPS+ in 2004, meaning he was 163 percent better than the league-average hitter after adjusting for context.⁹ By wRC+, his 2002, 2001, and 2004 seasons rank as three of the four greatest offensive campaigns ever measured, the only intruder being Ruth’s 1920.¹⁰ FanGraphs put it plainly: no player since has even approached this level.¹¹

Consider the finer numbers. Bonds 2004 BABIP (Batting Average Balls in Play) was .310—which means that over 1/3 of the balls he hit went for hits. Now, he did hit .362 for that season, which, at first glance, should mean his BABIP should be around .370. But here’s the kicker: homeruns and walks don’t count toward BABIP. Out of his 135 hits, 45 were homeruns. He only had 90 hits that stayed inside the fence. (MLB.com, 2026). In sum, he rarely put the ball in play without in leaving the yard. Indeed, he made the pitcher throw him strikes in his zone and when they did, he made them pay.

Moreover, his BB rate for this season was 37.6%. and his K rate was a mere 6.6%.(Fangraphs, 2026). To put this into context, the MLB average BB rate for 2004 was 7.6% and the MLB average K rate for that season was 16.7%. (Baseball-Reference, 2026). Which means that Bonds walked 30% more than the average MLB hitter and struck out nearly 10% less.

I know the objection, because it arrives before the numbers do. The PED cloud hangs over all of it, and it’s why Cooperstown’s doors remain shut. That’s a real conversation, and an honest one, although I disagree with it entirely. But it’s a separate conversation.

What Bonds did to the strike zone in 2004, the refusal to chase, the surgical patience, the willingness to take ball four 232 times rather than give a pitcher one inch, is a study in discipline that exists independent of how he built the body around it.

The home runs made him famous. The walks made him untouchable.

A .609 on-base percentage is not a typo. It’s a Hall-of-Fame worthy feat.

Notes

“Barry Bonds Stats, Height, Weight, Position, Rookie Status & More,” Baseball-Reference.com, accessed June 10, 2026, https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml.
“MLB Twitter Abuzz over Barry Bonds’ Unprecedented Career Stats: ‘2004 Barry Bonds Like Watching Superman Play Baseball,’” Sportskeeda, accessed June 10, 2026, https://www.sportskeeda.com/baseball/news-mlb-twitter-abuzz-barry-bonds-unprecedented-career-stats-2004-barry-bonds-like-watching-superman-play-baseball.
“A Season for the Ages,” FanGraphs, July 26, 2011, https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-season-for-the-ages/.
FanGraphs, “A Season for the Ages.”
Baseball-Reference.com, “Barry Bonds Stats.”
FanGraphs, “A Season for the Ages.”
“Barry Bonds, Pac-Man and the Greatest Baseball Fun Fact of All Time,” ESPN, accessed June 10, 2026, https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18977810/barry-bonds-pac-man-greatest-baseball-fun-fact-all.
ESPN, “Barry Bonds, Pac-Man.”
Baseball-Reference.com, “Barry Bonds Stats.”
“8 Wild Barry Bonds Stats After MLB Legend Was Snubbed by Baseball Hall of Fame,” Bleacher Report, January 26, 2022, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2952729-8-wild-barry-bonds-stats-after-mlb-legend-was-snubbed-by-baseball-hall-of-fame.
“Barry Bonds and the 2002 World Series,” FanGraphs, October 29, 2012, https://blogs.fangraphs.com/barry-bonds-and-the-2002-world-series/

Reclassing 8th Graders: The Self-Defeating Trend of Holding Kids Back for Sports

Andrew Reed — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:31:20 GMT

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We have invented a polite word for an impolite act. It’s called “reclassing,” and in youth sports it now means holding a perfectly capable eighth-grader back a year, not because he failed anything, but because an extra year of size and strength makes him a more dominant athlete. Borrow a term from college football and suddenly making a thirteen-year-old repeat a grade he already aced sounds like strategy instead of what it is.

Apparently, this has been going on for at least a decade now and happens in nearly every state in the US; however, I first heard about this phenomenon happening in my home state of Florida on the news this week and my jaw dropped.

Let’s be precise about who this is for. Not the late-birthday kid. Not the student who’s genuinely struggling. This is about the proficient child whose parents trade a year of his education for a competitive edge on the field. Is that a good trade? Weigh it honestly.

The case for it

A full year of physical maturity at fourteen is a real, immediate advantage, more playing time, better all-star odds, more recruiting visibility.
Parents see a possible path to a college scholarship and treat the extra year as an investment.
A bigger, older freshman is simply harder to cut.

The case against it

The advantage is self-canceling. Once enough families do it, everyone is a year older and right back where they started, an arms race with no winners. New Jersey already estimates reclass rates above 20 percent, and near 40 percent in private schools (I Love to Watch You Play).
The payoff rarely arrives. Roughly 1 percent of high school basketball players reach Division I, and only about 2 percent of all high school athletes earn any college athletic money at all (Youth Sports Business Report).
It is academically corrosive. Education Week’s research finds that holding a student back yields little or no academic benefit and can breed boredom and erode self-esteem, and that is for kids who need it. For one who has already mastered the material, you have simply idled a capable mind for twelve months.
It is inequitable. Brookings data shows reclassing skews toward affluent and private-school families, buying an edge most kids can’t.
The loophole may be closing. A pending NCAA proposal, reported by Sports Illustrated in May 2026, would start an athlete’s eligibility clock at high school graduation or age nineteen, meaning a reclassed kid could forfeit a year of college play for his year of middle-school dominance.

My take

If it’s done for holistic developmental reasons such as if a child is physically very small for their age or struggled academically in 8th grade then perhaps this move can be justified, however, in general I think it is highly unnecessary, and potentially harmful.

Strip away the jargon and you are treating a middle schooler like a professional asset, an appreciating commodity to be optimized, held, and deployed for maximum return. Children are not investments. When you hold a thirteen-year-old back for sport alone, you teach him something he/she will carry long after the cleats come off: that who he/she is right now is not enough, and that his worth is measured in inches, pounds, and playing time.

That is a heavy psychological burden to hand a kid who only wanted to play. We are mortgaging a child’s sense of self for a game he is supposed to enjoy. No scholarship is worth that.

Sources: Youth Sports Business Report on scholarship odds and the Brookings demographic data; I Love to Watch You Play on New Jersey reclass rates and Education Week’s retention research; National Sports ID on eligibility rules and public-school prohibitions; the NCAA eligibility proposal as reported by Sports Illustrated, May 2026.

Nobody's Perfect: How Armando Galarraga's Stolen Perfect Game Built Modern Baseball Replay

Andrew Reed — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:31:33 GMT

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Sixteen years ago today, Armando Galarraga retired 28 consecutive Cleveland hitters—that’s right 28…not 27. He got credit for a perfect game against none of them.

It remains the most consequential officiating mistake in baseball history. Not because of what it cost one pitcher, because of what it built.

The facts are simple, and they still sting. June 2, 2010. Comerica Park. Galarraga, a journeyman who’d posted a negative WAR and an ERA north of 5.00 the season before, was dismantling Cleveland.¹ Through eight and two-thirds innings, 26 men came to the plate. Twenty-six walked back. One out to go.

Jason Donald slapped a grounder into the right side. Miguel Cabrera fielded it, flipped to Galarraga covering first, and the pitcher caught it cleanly with his foot on the bag, ahead of the runner. Everyone in the building saw it. First-base umpire Jim Joyce, 23 years on the job, called Donald safe.²

The replay was instant and merciless. Donald was out. Galarraga had thrown a perfect game. The scoreboard disagreed.

What happened next is the part baseball loves to remember. No meltdown. Galarraga smiled, a stunned, disbelieving smile, walked back to the mound, and retired the 28th batter to finish a one-hit shutout.³ Joyce watched the tape after the game, walked straight to the Tigers clubhouse, and said the words that have trailed him ever since: “I just cost that kid a perfect game.”⁴ The next afternoon, Galarraga carried the lineup card to home plate. Joyce, working the dish, wept.⁵

The grace was real. But grace isn’t the legacy. The machinery that moment set in motion is.

Consider what Joyce was carrying that night. Weeks earlier, he’d worked second base for Dallas Braden’s perfect game.⁶ Roy Halladay had thrown one 20 days before Galarraga’s near-miss. Three perfect games in a single season had never happened, and the man who should have been the third was denied by the naked eye of an umpire who desperately wanted to get it right. That’s the cruel irony. Joyce wasn’t careless. He was simply human, and human wasn’t good enough anymore.

The reaction told you the ground had shifted. The White House press secretary said he hoped MLB would award the perfect game.⁷ A Michigan congressman drafted a resolution demanding the reversal.⁸ Commissioner Bud Selig refused to overturn it, invoking the sanctity of the human element.⁹ He kept the result. (unlike the MLB’s overturning of George Brett’s “pine tar” homerun 25 years earlier). He couldn’t keep the status quo.

Here’s the through-line, and it’s the whole point. In 2010, baseball had no mechanism to fix what every fan at home saw in two seconds. By 2014, four years later, the league had expanded instant replay and handed managers the challenge, the exact tool that would have corrected Joyce in under 90 seconds.¹⁰ A bang-bang play at first is reviewable today because plays like Donald’s grounder proved the eye alone couldn’t be trusted.

The line doesn’t stop there. The 2014 replay system was the proof of concept. The 2026 ABS challenge system, now fixing ball-strike calls in fifteen seconds, is the next chapter of the same story. Both trace back, in part, to one night in Detroit, when the gap between what the umpire called and what the camera showed grew too wide for the sport to ignore.

Galarraga never got his perfect game. He got something stranger, and arguably more durable: a 28-out line in the record books, a co-authored book with the man who robbed him, and an unintended role as the patron saint of replay review.

The technology has been chasing Jim Joyce for sixteen years.

It’s nearly caught him.

Sources

Sports Illustrated / FanNation, “Today in MLB History,” 2025; Galarraga’s 2009 statistics.
Society for American Baseball Research, “June 2, 2010: Blown call costs Tigers’ Armando Galarraga a perfect game.”
SABR game story, 2018.
SABR game story, quoting Joyce; ESPN, “Blown call still haunts umpire Jim Joyce,” 2011.
Detroit Free Press / Imagn; Sports Illustrated, “Today in MLB History.”
ESPN, “Blown call still haunts umpire Jim Joyce” — Joyce worked second base for Dallas Braden’s perfect game weeks earlier.
CBS News, “Armando Galarraga Deserves Perfect Game Despite Blown Call, White House Says,” 2010.
CBS News, “Congressman Introducing Resolution Pushing Baseball to Award Armando Galarraga Perfect Game,” 2010 (Rep. John Dingell).
Associated Press, via Wikipedia, “Armando Galarraga’s near-perfect game” — confirmation the call would not be reversed.
MLB expanded instant replay and manager’s challenge implemented for the 2014 season.

From Jim Thorpe to Patrick Mahomes: Why the Greatest Athletes in American History Played Multiple Sports

Andrew Reed — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:31:23 GMT

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As many of you know by now, I am totally against early specialization in sports. I do think there is a time and a place for it but under 16 (hell maybe even 18) isn’t it.

This isn’t because I think every parent or child wants to become or should want to become a D1, Olympic, or professional athlete, if so then specialization certainly isn’t the route you should take, but because I think children should develop good fitness habits they can carry into adulthood.

Indeed, the greatest athletes in American history were not specialists. They were generalists. And the more the youth sports industry insists otherwise, the more the historical record argues against them.

Start with Jim Thorpe. The Associated Press named him the greatest American athlete of the first half of the 20th century in 1953.¹ He won Olympic gold medals in both the pentathlon and decathlon at Stockholm in 1912, played six seasons of Major League Baseball, became a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and served as the first president of what would become the NFL.² He also played varsity basketball, lacrosse, boxing, and hockey, and won a national ballroom dancing title.³ King Gustav V of Sweden looked at him after the Stockholm Games and said, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”⁴ Thorpe was not produced by a development pipeline. He was produced by playing everything in front of him.

Move forward seven decades. Bo Jackson won the Heisman Trophy at Auburn in 1985, rushing for 1,786 yards and 17 touchdowns, while also starring on the Tigers’ baseball team and competing in track and field.⁵ He went first overall in the 1986 NFL Draft, then chose to play baseball too. He remains the only athlete ever named an All-Star in both Major League Baseball and the NFL.⁶

Deion Sanders did the same thing in reverse order. He played football, baseball, and ran track at Florida State,⁷ was drafted by the Kansas City Royals out of high school in 1985,⁸ went fifth overall in the 1989 NFL Draft, won two Super Bowls, made eight Pro Bowls, and played nine seasons in MLB simultaneously.⁹ FOX Sports ranked him the greatest multi-sport athlete in American history in 2025.¹⁰

Here is the part that should end the argument entirely: the trend has not died. It has just gone underground.

Patrick Mahomes was a three-sport star at Whitehouse High School in Texas, football, basketball, and baseball. He threw a no-hitter, scored 49 points in a playoff basketball game, and was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the 2014 MLB Draft.¹¹ MaxPreps named him National Athlete of the Year as a senior.¹²

Kyler Murray played football and baseball at Allen High School and went 42-0 as a starting quarterback while winning three state titles.¹³ He is the only athlete in history selected in the first round of both the MLB and NFL drafts.¹⁴

Russell Wilson played minor league baseball in the Colorado Rockies’ farm system before transferring to Wisconsin to focus on football.¹⁵ Tom Brady was drafted by the Montreal Expos. Aaron Judge played football, basketball, and baseball in high school.

The list runs longer than the travel ball brochure wants to admit.

The smoking gun is in the draft data. In the 2018 NFL Draft, 91 percent of first-round picks, 29 of 32 players, played more than one sport in high school.¹⁶ Not one or two. Twenty-nine.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has been blunt about why he recruits multi-sport athletes: “The different types of coaching, the different types of locker rooms, the different environments… that’s all part of development.”¹⁷

The travel ball pitch insists your kid needs to specialize at 9 to compete. The historical record, across more than a century, across every era and every sport, argues the exact opposite. The athletes at the top of the mountain almost universally got there by playing everything on the way up.

The greats were not specialists. The system that produces them shouldn’t be either.

Sources

Associated Press, 1953 poll naming Thorpe greatest American athlete of the first half-century; cited in SABR biographical project.
Society for American Baseball Research, “Jim Thorpe” biography; Olympics.com, “Jim Thorpe.”
History.com, “How Jim Thorpe Became America’s First Multi-Sport Star,” 2023.
Olympics.com, “Jim Thorpe” profile, quoting King Gustav V of Sweden, 1912.
ESPN, “Bo Knows Stardom and Disappointment,” Ron Flatter; Sportscasting, “Deion Sanders vs. Bo Jackson,” 2023.
ESPN, “Bo Knows Stardom and Disappointment.”
Yardbarker, “Greatest Multi-Sport Athletes Ranked,” 2025.
MLB.com, “Royals nearly inked 1985 Draft pick Deion,” 2018.
Sports Illustrated, “Greatest Multi-Sport Athletes of All-Time Ranked,” 2025.
FOX Sports rankings, cited in Sports Illustrated and Yardbarker, 2025.
MaxPreps, “Top 10 Texas High School Athletes of the 21st Century.”
MaxPreps National Athlete of the Year, 2013–14.
MaxPreps, “Top 10 Texas High School Athletes of the 21st Century.”
CBS Sports, “A Look at Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray and Other Active NFL Players Who Could Have Had MLB Careers,” 2019.
CBS Sports, 2019.
USA Football, “Multi-Sport Play Delivers Skills, Success On and Off the Field,” 2021.
Dabo Swinney, New York Times, 2016; cited via USA Football.

Why 70% of Kids Quit Youth Sports by Age 13 and the National Health Crisis It’s Creating

Andrew Reed — Fri, 22 May 2026 18:13:13 GMT

The most famous statistic in youth sports may also be the most misleading. You’ve heard it everywhere: 70 percent of kids quit organized sports by age 13. It comes from a National Alliance for Youth Sports poll, and it has been repeated by CNN, the Washington Post, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and roughly every youth sports advocate in America for the last decade.¹

It is also, almost certainly, wrong in its specifics. Researchers who have tried to trace the 70 percent figure to a hard primary source have come up empty.² CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey data shows that high school participation in organized sports has held above 50 percent since 2000, except during COVID.³

Project Play’s Tom Farrey puts it more precisely: the average age a child quits a sport is around 12.⁴

So the headline number is shaky. The underlying crisis is not.

Here is what is actually happening. Youth sports participation peaks around age 14 and then falls off a cliff, both in the United States and globally.⁵

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ 2024 clinical report on overuse injuries and burnout confirms the central trend: while more than 60 million American children participate in organized sports, the dropoff is steep enough that 75 percent of U.S. teens fail to meet basic physical activity recommendations.⁶

Girls leave at roughly twice the rate of boys by age 14.⁷ The kids most likely to quit are the ones who specialized earliest, played year-round, and reached the point where the sport stopped being a game and became a job.

The AAP report names the culprit directly: “the professionalization of youth sports.” Excessive training volume, single-sport pressure, and the loss of enjoyment are driving kids out of athletics at exactly the age they need movement most.⁸

This isn’t kids being lazy. This is a system burning them out before their bodies finish developing.

The public health consequences compound. A 21-year longitudinal study found that persistent youth sport participation predicts adult physical activity levels, with downstream effects on obesity, cardiovascular fitness, bone health, and mental health.⁹

The Princeton School District follow-up study tracked youth athletes into adulthood and found continuous participants had lower BMI and higher HDL cholesterol decades later.¹⁰ A child who quits at 12 or 13 doesn’t just lose a season. They lose a habit.

The cost is now national. The CDC estimates that physical inactivity carries a $131 billion annual price tag for the U.S. healthcare system.¹¹ More than a quarter of Americans aged 17 to 24 are now too obese to qualify for military service.¹² Senate Armed Services Committee testimony in 2022 cited physical inactivity as a national security concern.¹³

That is the real story underneath the famous statistic. Whether the exact dropout number is 70 percent or 50 percent or somewhere in between matters less than the structural truth: the American youth sports system is, by design, producing a generation that quits early and stays inactive for life.

Youth Sports isn’t just expensive. It has become a public health problem dressed up as a developmental pipeline.

Competitiveness and a winning mindset are important, don’t get me wrong, but it has to be developed gradually and pushed at the right time.

And 6-12 years old is not the right time.

And, unfortunately, we will be paying that bill for decades.

Sources

1. National Alliance for Youth Sports poll, widely cited via Washington Post (2016), CNN (Kelly Wallace, 2016), and ParentsTogether.

2. Tom Farrey (Project Play) and Jon Janosky, cited in USA Today Sports / Tucson.com, “Why the ubiquitous stat is wrong,” 2026.

3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Youth Risk Behavior Survey, multi-year data.

4. Tom Farrey, Project Play, cited in USA Today Sports, 2026.

5. Emmonds et al. (2023), cross-national study of organized youth sport across 27 countries and 18 sports.

6. American Academy of Pediatrics, Brenner and Watson, “Overuse Injuries, Overtraining, and Burnout in Young Athletes,” Pediatrics, 2024.

7. Nemours Children’s Health research presented at the 2023 AAP National Conference & Exhibition.

8. AAP clinical report, 2024 (Brenner and Watson).

9. Frontiers in Public Health, longitudinal study on youth sport persistence and adult activity, 2020.

10. Princeton School District follow-up study, cited in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (MDPI), 2021.

11. CDC physical inactivity cost estimate, 2015.

12. Project Play, “Youth Sports Facts: Consequences,” citing Department of Defense recruitment data.

13. Senate Armed Services Committee testimony, Lt. Gen. David Ottignon, 2022

Why Are MLB Strikeouts So High? It's Not Just Better Pitching

Andrew Reed — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:45:28 GMT

Walter Johnson said hitting was “timing.” Pitching, he said, was “upsetting timing.” A century later, that simple line explains why today’s strike zone has become a meat grinder, but it doesn’t explain the part nobody is talking about.

League-wide strikeout rate has more than doubled since 1950. As of 2026, the gap between the league K rate (22%) and walk rate (9%) sits at 13 percentage points. In 1980? That same gap was barely four. Strikeouts have exploded. Walks have barely budged, stuck between 8% and 9.5% for three-quarters of a century. That asymmetry is the most important data point in modern baseball, and almost no one mentions it.

If pitching had simply gotten “better,” walks would have collapsed alongside contact. They haven’t. Pitchers aren’t dominating the strike zone more, they’re getting more swings-and-misses inside it.

The Pitching Side: Real, But Oversold

Yes, pitchers throw harder. The average four-seam fastball climbed from 89.0 mph in 2002 to 94.0 mph in 2025, per FanGraphs. Sliders gained four mph. Curveballs gained five. In 2024 alone, MLB recorded 2,783 fastballs at 100+ mph, roughly ten times the 2008 figure.

But here is what gets missed: pitchers aren’t throwing more fastballs. They’re throwing far fewer. Fastball usage has cratered from 64.4% in 2002 to 47.9% in 2025. Slider usage has nearly doubled. Why? Because the league hits .261 with a .426 slug against fastballs, and just .224/.337 against breaking balls. Pitchers learned which pitches generated whiffs, and they threw more of them.

Statcast accelerated this. It didn’t cause it. The K-rate climb began with PitchFX in 2007, before Statcast existed.

The Bullpen Revolution

The biggest structural shift in the modern game isn’t on a Statcast leaderboard. It’s in the dugout. The percentage of innings thrown by starters fell from 63–64% in 1996–2013 to 54% in 2014–2022. Starters today average just over five innings; in the 1980s, they averaged more than six and a third. The “third time through the order” penalty has been quantified, and managers act on it relentlessly.

The result? Hitters face a procession of fresh, max-effort relievers sitting 95-plus instead of a tiring starter at 91. That isn’t a pitching revolution. It’s a usage revolution and it has done as much to inflate strikeout rates as any spin-rate breakthrough.

The Hitter Side: A Choice, Not a Verdict

Here is where the conversation usually ends and where it shouldn’t.

Look at the great hitters of yesteryear: Ruth (12% K, 19% BB). Williams (7% K, 21% BB). Gehrig (8% K, 16% BB). Bonds (12% K, 20% BB). Bring it forward to a more recent reference point, Frank Thomas, the Big Hurt, and you still get 14% K and 17% BB. Elite plate discipline by any era’s standard.

Now look at today’s titans: Judge (27% K, 16% BB). Trout (23%/15%). Ohtani (25%/13%). Today’s superstars strike out more often than the league average of 1980 and roughly twice as often as the icons of any earlier era.

What do today’s hitters have in common? Enormous power and a calculated decision to swing harder and accept the cost. A strikeout, in expected run value, is roughly 95% as damaging as a groundout. Modern hitters know this. They’ve made the trade willingly.

Then there is Juan Soto. 17% K. 18% BB. He faces the same 95+-mph fastballs, the same nasty sweepers, the same fresh-armed setup men as everyone else. His K/BB profile would have made Ted Williams nod. The difference between Soto and Judge isn’t physics. It’s philosophy.

Can Old-School Still Work?

Soto proves it can. So how does a hitter resist the strikeout tide?

First, a real two-strike approach. Soto, Freeman, and Arraez all shorten up, choke the bat, and prioritize contact when behind. Most modern hitters keep their A-swing in any count.

Second, hunt the fastball. With breaking balls now over half the league’s pitch mix, hitters who can sit fastball and still adjust to spin gain the edge old-school zone discipline used to provide automatically.

Third, accept smaller damage for higher contact. Arraez doesn’t slug. He doesn’t need to. Soto’s exit velocity isn’t elite, but his contact rate and decision quality are world-class.

The strikeout era is not a verdict on hitters. It is a market, one in which most hitters have decided that power is worth the whiff. Soto reminds us another path still exists. Whether more take it depends on what front offices reward. Right now, they reward damage. The strikeout boom won’t end until that incentive structure does.

Sources & Further Reading

Velocity and pitch-usage trends, 2002–2025: RotoWire / FanGraphs, MLB Pitch Speed & Usage Trends: 2002–2025
Triple-digit fastball counts: Bleacher Report, MLB’s Year of the Fastball Has Been Exciting and Dangerous (2024)
Pitch-type batting splits (.261/.426 vs FB; .224/.337 vs breaking): CBS Sports, MLB Trends (April 2026)
Starter share of innings & times-through-the-order data: Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), Balancing Starter and Bullpen Workloads
Curveball decline & average start length: FanGraphs / Ground News reporting on 2024–2025 pitching trends

What MLB Scouts Actually Look For at 10 vs. 15 and Why the Exposure Pitch Is Wrong

Andrew Reed — Thu, 07 May 2026 14:46:00 GMT

If you liked this article, you can support me with a tip at Buy Me a Coffee…in other words, TIP!

There is a sales pitch baked into every travel ball pamphlet, every showcase brochure, every $3,000 tournament weekend. The pitch goes like this: scouts are watching, and the earlier your kid gets exposure, the better. It’s effective. It’s profitable. And it is almost entirely false.

Here is the truth that travel ball doesn’t sell: nobody who matters is meaningfully scouting your 10-year-old. Major League scouts don’t track players that young. College coaches don’t either. Even the most aggressive area scouts in MLB typically begin tracking players in junior high at the earliest, and most don’t engage seriously until the freshman or sophomore year of high school. ¹ The 14-year-old story is the rare exception, not the model.

Heck, nowadays with the new rules, players cannot commit until junior year of high school and with the transfer portal, those scouts have more mature 19–21-year-olds at their disposal.

The reason is simple, and it is the most important concept in scouting that parents almost never hear: projection.

Scouts evaluate players using a 20-80 scale across the five tools, hitting, hitting for power, running, fielding, and throwing. Every grade is assigned twice. The first number is the present grade. The second is the future grade, what the player will become at physical maturity, typically around age 22 or 23.²

That projection is the entire job. As one MLB scout put it bluntly: “We’re hoping to project on a kid. I don’t like going to the ballpark and the 18-year-old senior is already a man and there’s no projection there.”³

This is why the 10-year-old comparison is meaningless. At 10, biological maturity is years away. You cannot project a body that hasn’t begun puberty. You cannot grade a swing against pitching that doesn’t exist at the level the kid will eventually face. A scout looking at a 10-year-old is looking at a child. There is no useful future grade to assign.

At 15, the calculus changes. The body is closer to its eventual frame. Bat speed is measurable against quality breaking pitches. Arm strength can be projected forward with reasonable confidence. Now the scout’s eye matters, and counterintuitively, scouts often prefer the leaner, less physically developed 15-year-old to the kid who already looks like a grown man. Why? Because the lean kid has projection left. The mature kid is closer to his ceiling.⁴

Power is the latest tool to develop, often not appearing until 17 or 18.⁵ The 10-year-old who hits the ball over the fence at a tournament tells you almost nothing about whether he’ll have major-league power at 22. The travel ball industry sells results that scouts have specifically been trained to ignore.

And here is the part the showcase circuit doesn’t advertise: scouts barely look at statistics. As one MLB area scout said directly, “A lot of the scouts don’t even bear down on stats… I like them because of their projection.”⁶

So when a travel ball coach tells you your 10-year-old needs more exposure, ask: exposure to whom? The honest answer is nobody who can do anything about it. The scouts who matter aren’t watching yet. By the time they are, exposure won’t be the issue. The body, the tools, and the projection will be.

That is the real timeline. Plan accordingly.

P.S. It’s sad that I had to write this, but you would be amazed at what parents think nowadays.

Sources

Sportscasting / Scott Jenkins, citing an unnamed MLB scouting director: “What Age Do Scouts Start Looking at Baseball Players?” 2020.
Baseball Scouter, “Understanding the 20-80 Scouting Scale in Baseball,” 2026.
Baseball America, “What Are Baseball Scouts Looking For?” 2010.
Baseball America, “What Are Baseball Scouts Looking For?” 2010 (lean-frame projection quote).
Perfect Game USA, “The Five Tool Player,” scouting development timeline reference.
MLB area scout Willie Romay, interview, Miami-Dade High School Baseball, 2012.

How Norway, Sweden, and Japan Built Better Youth Sports Systems Than the United States

Andrew Reed — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:55:21 GMT

If you liked this article, you can support me with a tip at Buy Me a Coffee…in other words, TIP!

The American youth sports model is a $40 billion industry built on parental anxiety.¹ Norway, Sweden, and Japan have built something different. None of them are perfect, but each one outperforms us on the metrics that actually matter: participation rates, late-life athletic engagement, and elite athlete production per capita. The lesson is uncomfortable: the United States is the outlier, not the standard.

Start with Norway. The country runs its entire youth sports system on a 1987 document called Children’s Rights in Sports, updated in 2007.² It reads like a direct rebuke of American practice: no national rankings before age 13, no regional championships before age 11, no travel teams in the early years, and any child who wants to participate, participates. Annual participation costs typically run under $1,000 per child.³ The result is a 93 percent youth sports participation rate, nearly double the American rate of roughly 54 percent.⁴ A country of 5.5 million people just won the most medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, the third consecutive Winter Games where Norway has topped the table.⁵

Sweden takes a slightly different path but lands in similar territory. The Swedish Sports Confederation governs youth sport through a policy document titled Idrotten Vill — “Sports Want.” The vision is “the world’s best children’s and youth sport,” explicitly framed around joy, broad participation, and lifelong engagement rather than early identification.⁶ Two large state-funded programs, Handslaget in 2002–2006 and Idrottslyftet beginning in 2007, have invested over €300 million combined into reducing fees, expanding girls’ participation, and partnering with schools.⁷ The Swedish model treats youth sport as public health infrastructure, not as a private market.

Japan offers the most provocative comparison because it’s the most demanding. The system runs through bukatsu, school-based extracurricular clubs, where 92 percent of junior high students and 81 percent of high schoolers participate in at least one club.⁸ Bukatsu is intense. Daily practice. Weekend tournaments. Strict senpai-kohai mentorship. But the structure is anchored in school, not in private travel programs that follow families across state lines on weekends. Participation is essentially free, supervised by teachers, and built into the educational rhythm of adolescence. ⁹ Japan has problems, teacher burnout among them, but it produces world-class athletes in baseball, soccer, judo, and increasingly basketball, while keeping the cost barrier near zero.

Now compare the United States. American families spent an average of $1,016 on a child’s primary sport in 2024, a 46 percent increase since 2019.¹⁰ The participation gap between low-income and high-income households has widened to 20.2 percentage points.¹¹ Children from families earning over $100,000 are twice as likely to play travel sports as those from families earning under $50,000.¹² We are spending more, achieving narrower access, and selecting athletes earlier than any of the three models above.

Three countries. Three different mechanisms, rights-based, state-funded, school-anchored. One shared insight: youth sport works when it is treated as a public good for everyone, not a luxury good for the families who can afford to chase it.

Now, I am not saying that we can or should emulate these countries absolutely, as our country is a lot larger and we have a different culture but maybe we can pull some of these methods that can work for us. Either way, something has to change.

We have built the opposite. And the data is starting to show what that costs us.

Sources

Aspen Institute Project Play, “State of Play 2025”; Project Play parent survey data, 2024–25.
Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF), Children’s Rights in Sports (1987, updated 2007 and 2019).
Aspen Institute, “World’s Leading Sport Systems: Norway”; TeamGenius, “Norway Youth Sports Model,” 2026.
Project Play, State of Play 2025; Aspen Institute citing federal National Children’s Health Survey data.
Reporting on 2026 Winter Olympics medal table, Milano-Cortina; Scary Mommy, February 2026.
Riksidrottsförbundet (Swedish Sports Confederation), “Guidelines for Children’s and Youth Sport: Idrotten Vill.”
Swedish Sport Policy research, International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics (Norberg, 2015).
Japan Sports Agency, FY 2017 Fact-Finding Survey on Sports Club Activities; Sasakawa Sports Foundation, 2024 analysis.
Sasakawa Sports Foundation, “How Do Children and Young People in Japan Participate in Sports?” 2024.
Aspen Institute Project Play / Utah State University / Louisiana Tech University, 2024 National Youth Sports Parent Survey.
Project Play, State of Play 2025, citing SFIA participation data.
Aspen Institute Project Play parent survey, 2024.

MLB's ABS Challenge System Is Working and the Home Plate Umpire's Days Are Numbered

Andrew Reed — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:34:58 GMT

If you liked this article, you can support me with a tip at Buy Me a Coffee…in other words, TIP!

Alright, here is my honest opinion of how the ABS system has performed so far: the ABS system is working. That’s right. Three weeks into the 2026 season, and baseball is already asking the question purists swore would never come: if the machine is this good, why do we need the human at all?

The numbers don’t hide. Nearly 1,000 calls challenged. Fifty-five percent overturned. Defensive challenges landing at a 61 percent clip. These aren’t edge cases on pitches half an inch off the black, these are blown calls that used to disappear into the noise of a 162-game season. Now they get corrected in fifteen seconds and play resumes. Game times are up four minutes. That’s the whole price.

The traditionalists have already staked out their ground. Umpires bring feel. Umpires bring humanity. The strike zone is a living, breathing thing, not a rectangle drawn by Hawk-Eye cameras. I’ve heard it all. And I sympathize with the nostalgia, I really do.

But nostalgia doesn’t win pennants, and it doesn’t erase the reality that fans in every ballpark are now cheering the videoboard replay like it’s a walk-off.

Travis d’Arnaud put it plainly: “I think it’s been entertaining.” He’s right. The challenge moment has become must-see television. Fans lean in. Broadcasters dial up. The umpire either nods with vindication or tips his cap. That’s not a gimmick. That’s the future arriving in real time.

But, most importantly, integrity of the game is coming back. With all due respect to the umpires, having an inconsistent strike zone at this level does nothing for the game.

Here’s my bet. Five to ten years from now, the home plate umpire is gone. Not diminished. Gone. Once a generation of fans grows up watching the zone called correctly, they won’t go back. They can’t. When Hawk-Eye calls 100 percent of pitches with zero controversy, the argument for a man crouched behind the catcher becomes what it already is, sentimental.

Baseball adapts. Or it dies.

ABS is adaptation.

The Relative Age Effect in Baseball: How Your Child’s Birthday Decides Their Little League Future

Andrew Reed — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 02:01:51 GMT

If your son was born in the summer months (June-August), the system is quietly working against him. Not because of talent. Not because of effort. Because of a date on a calendar that nobody explained to you when you signed him up for Little League.

The Little League Baseball age determination date is August 31.¹ That means every kid playing in a given season is grouped by how old they were on that day. A boy born September 1 is the oldest in his cohort — nearly twelve months older than a boy born the following August 31, even though the system treats them as the same age. At age 10, that’s a 10 percent age gap. Bigger body, stronger arm, more reps, more confidence, more everything.

This is called the Relative Age Effect, and it is one of the most well-documented biases in sports science.²

The historical data on this is remarkable. For 55 years, until Little League began phasing in a new cutoff in 2006, the age determination date was July 31.³ (As an August birthday, yours truly was a beneficiary of this rule growing up in the 90’s).

Under that rule, kids born in August were the oldest in their cohort, and kids born in July were the youngest. Now look at what happened at the professional level. Among U.S.-born MLB players who appeared in a game from 1965 onward, 12.2 percent were born in August. Only 6.4 percent were born in July.⁴ Nearly double. Same country, same game, same genetics, but one group had a birthday that landed them among the oldest in their Little League year, and the other group landed among the youngest.

A study published in the Sociology of Sport Journal confirmed the pattern: MLB players were significantly overrepresented among those born in the first months of the Little League eligibility year.⁵

That is not talent selection. That is calendar selection.

Here’s how it compounds. The relatively older kid in the cohort makes the All-Star team at nine. He gets more reps, better coaching, more tournament exposure. At eleven, he gets selected for the travel team.

At thirteen, he’s on a showcase roster. The younger kid in the cohort, same raw ability, same love of the game, got passed over at nine because he was smaller. By thirteen, he’s done. No more baseball.

Studies estimate roughly 70 percent of kids drop out of organized sports by age 13,⁶ and the relatively younger cohort is overrepresented in that exodus.

The cruel twist is what happens at the top. Once athletes survive the gauntlet, the relatively younger ones actually outperform. A study of MVP-caliber athletes across professional soccer, hockey, baseball, and Australian rules football found that players born later in their selection year were overrepresented among the true elite, 55 percent of award winners.⁷

The ones who made it despite the system had to develop real skill to survive it. Mike Trout, Cody Bellinger, Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, all born on the young end of their cohort. They weren’t selected by the system. They beat it.

Which means the Relative Age Effect isn’t just unfair. It’s inefficient. Baseball is losing late-blooming kids who would have been better players than the ones the system selected.

So if you’re a parent of an August-born kid under the current Little League rule, your son isn’t behind. The calendar is.

Push back on the early cuts. Ignore the All-Star snubs at nine. Play him up when you can. Look at his technique, not the scoreboard.

The data says the kids who survive this system are often the best of the bunch.

They just have to survive it first.

Sources

1. Little League International, “League Age Determination.” littleleague.org

2. Wikipedia, “Relative Age Effect,” citing foundational research from Barnsley, Thompson, and Barnsley (1985) and Helsen, Van Winckel, and Williams (2005).

3. Little League International, age determination date change announcement, phased in from 2006 through 2018.

4. Lee, Christopher. “Birth Month Effect On Baseball Players.” christopherlee.com, analyzing MLB players since 1965.

5. Thompson, A.H., Barnsley, R.H., Stebelsky, G. “‘Born to Play Ball’: The Relative Age Effect and Major League Baseball.” Sociology of Sport Journal, 1991.

6. National Alliance for Youth Sports, widely cited youth sports dropout statistic.

7. Ford, P. and Williams, M., cited in FiveThirtyEight, “Why Athletes’ Birthdays Affect Who Goes Pro — And Who Becomes A Star,” 2021.