[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the abca's podcast. I'm your host, ryan brownlee.
Baseball is a story told across generations through the players, the moments and the gloves that shape the game. Now that story comes to life in Rawlings, the Finest in the Field book available now for pre
[email protected] each of the 50 gloves is presented through detailed photography and paired with immersive essays that place the artifact within its historical context.
Captivating imagery, period advertisements and additional memorabilia further illuminate the era each glove represents. Reserve your copy
[email protected] and be among the first to experience baseball's evolution as told through the story of these iconic gloves.
This episode is sponsored by Netting Pros.
Netting Professionals are improving programs one facility at a time Netting Professionals specializes in the design, fabrication and installation of custom netting for backstops, batting cages, dugouts, BP screens and ball carts. They also design and install digital graphic wall padding, windscreen turf, turf protectors, dugout benches, dugout cubbies and more.
Netting Professionals is an official partner of the ABCA and continues to provide quality products and services to many high school, college and professional fields, facilities and stadiums throughout the country.
Netting Professionals are improving programs one facility at a time.
Contact them today at 844-620-2707 or infoettingpros.com, visit them online at www.nettingpros.com or check out NettingPros on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for all their latest products and projects. Make sure to let CEO Will Miner know that the ABCA sent you. Now on to the podcast.
This is part two of our conversation. We've dived deeper into what the ABCA Youth and Travel Committees are trying to get accomplished to help retention and health of amateur baseball players. Let's welcome Devin Morgan to the podcast.
And the thing I've always loved about you because you jumped on board with the Youth Summit right away and like anytime we've ever needed you, you get on a flight. It's not easy for you to get to the places that we're asking you to get to. You get on a flight and come and meet us, whether it was D.C. or we were in New York last week. Like, you get on a flight and come. Like you, you, you walk the walk. You're not just sitting in Seattle just pontificating. You're actually boots on the ground with us trying to get this stuff fixed.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, part, part of that is because, like, I don't know, like, I looked up to you guys. Like, I, I, you know, I people that I Want to grow. I want to be like when I grow up.
Rob Hani, Ryan Brownlee, Jordan Baltimore, Taylor McCullough and all these guys, men and women that are part of this coalition that we've built, part of our youth. The ABCA youth and travel baseball committees are all people who are their motivation. I don't think could be much more pure.
We're just trying to.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: I said it in New York. My goal is that this thing is going when the game is done with all of us and finished with all of us. The game is still thriving and going much stronger than it is right now.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Well, and that's, you know, and that's the, I think the precipice of where we are right now because of things that have happened in the last 10 to 20 years, you know, like travel and select baseball has to a degree kind of risen above recreational baseball in the youth space is like the preeminent domain.
With that comes all this consideration about value prop, about the way that coaches and organizations treat children and, and what they're trying to serve with the understanding that the more successful your organization is, the likelihood that you pick up more checks from parents increases. Like that's just, that's just the reality of what we're dealing with. And I think you can understand that not as just like as a bad thing, but as a simple thing for parents where my biological imperative is to keep my children safe. And I probably said that six years ago and it's still true today.
So if you understand parents need to keep children safe and if you understand winning as a scenario that's more likely to put your child in danger than losing, then of course parents are going to make choices and spend money in this environment to in search of the safest thing. The tricky thing is that like well then what happens when you cut the check right? And how is your child treated at an individual level once that's the landscape that you created. So so again you have a 10 year old that goes 80 plus in their first pitch in March.
Understand that as simply a coach who's looking to solve a problem and create a winning opportunity because the odds of that coach has other kids that are as competitive as that one relatively low and they are simply trying to find leverage to secure the win. Do right by the org, do right by the parents and the kids. But they don't understand like the long term ramifications of what happens when you make that choice. So our most recent efforts that revolve around the installation and creation of a new standard for universal Pitch counts, and then the installation and creation of a system for universal reporting that allows pitch counts that happen in recreational baseball space to travel baseball space to all go to the same place.
So now, instead of like pitch smart happening in little league and then not happening in like a select baseball tournament, you put all this information in the same place and you create a system where a kid is like, all their workload is tracked on the mound and it simply just communicates like, red light, green light. Are we in a place where it's safe and healthy for us to throw, or should we still be defined by a rest?
And we want that standard to be inclusive of what we understand from biomechanics, which we can get through the driveline pulse sensor, which is like a wearable sensor that you just have a player wear and it tracks all their throws.
And then you create the standard based around those understanding, rather than just kind of like throwing a dart at the wall and going, I think a player should be able to throw 25 pitches and not have a day of rest, right? Like, sure, I might think that number is 27.
My wife might think that that number is 35. What we're going to do is we're actually going to leverage the data that we have on the biomechanics side with pulse and be able to quantify that and also observe how that changes over the course of a week, over the course of a week, over the course of a month, and over the course of a season. And we're going to simulate millions and millions of permutations of how that workload can look and create a base standard that keeps these kids safer.
And then look, man, the other way that this thing could go is you have another layer on top of that where if a player is wearing a pulse sensor consistently, well, now you just. Your workload is your workload, and you're tracking all the right things and you can make the decision because the system is going to tell you, red light, green light, what are you building towards, what do you set up for, etc.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: And you said it. Solve a structure with the red light, green light. You said it, and it was interesting because people don't view it that way, but you and I have talked about that a lot.
Unless there is something flashing red next to a kid's name, then it's still going to be the wild, wild west.
And this is where you get the parents involved with it too, because again, you talked about parents wanting to keep their kids safe.
If it now flashes red next to my child's name.
I'm going to make sure they get off the mound.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Yep.
And you know, I've said this in our meetings, but I'll say it again. You know, one of the things that CEO of Dry Land Baseball Mike Rathwell has said that constantly rattles around in my brain is sunshine. Sunshine is the world's greatest disinfectant.
And I think if you think about the current Pitch Smart standard, I think the current pitch mark standard is probably a good starting place and I certainly would love to see that standard even being implemented more broadly now. We certainly want to, I think we can develop a better standard. But it's not to say that pitchmart is just bad at the start. The issue is that you think about an environment like Little League, right. Like I coached Little League Baseball for 12 years in one form or another.
The pitch Smart standard was introduced right at the start of when I started coaching. And I kept my kids workload managed. Not just my own kid, but all the kids that I coach under that standard for a long number of years. But I never reported that information upstream to anybody.
Right. Unless you go back and look at the game changer record of my teams back in like, I don't know, 2016 or whatever. It just exists very much in abstract that compounds the problem of like right hand, left hand where kids are pitching in rec ball now and they're double dipping in the travel and select ball space. There might be pitching for multiple teams, etc.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: Switching jersey numbers to be able to pitch.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yes, all of these things are happening. And when, you know, all that stuff is happening too, it just, it's like, it makes the problem even more fractal because even if everybody ran Pitch Smart, if it's not reported in a singular place, it's all just kind of like out, it doesn't touch each other, you know, and that's the thing that we've been pushing for.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: And again I, the universal tracking number. And as we know, almost every other sport has a universal tracking number for athletes and that keeps their data safe.
But then also I, I envision it as like the NCAA clearinghouse where you have to have probably a third party, non, you know, non compete third party that houses this information, then disseminates it to everyone.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Yeah, so, so that's the other thing we're advocating for is kind of the, the engine that makes this whole thing work is you have a, again, a central repository where every player gets just like a unique number. And what we would want to make this thing, you know, broadly work is where you register in Little League and you tie it to that number and then you registered for a PG or a PBR event and then it's also tied to that number and then you go participate in a local showcase provider, it's all tied to that number. So then all of this information, when the data starts flowing in, it's not that the Little League workload is over here and the PG or PBR workload or whatever is over here. It all comes into the same place again. I think one of the things that probably doesn't get talked about enough is that some of the rules that have been changed on the recreational baseball side in the last five years have made it a little bit more easy for kids to be able to double dip this way. And I understand, I think the participation reasons why those changes have been made. But if that's a thing that we're acknowledging is happening, and again from a systems perspective, we made it more likely impossible to happen, then I think we have to do the thing on the back end which is create a system that allows these kids to stay healthy and safe. Because at the end of the day, I think one of the things that freaks me out the most is there is a single digit gap on an annual basis between the number of kids that sign up to play baseball and the number of kids that quit. The number, amusingly enough, is 6.9% most recently.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: And you've equated that with football too. Football had a cte, whether right or wrong, but they had. It was a bad optics. And you've talked about sending up a trust signal. We have to do something to send a signal to parents that we're trying to at least alleviate this problem. You're never going to get it fixed. Everybody, people get hurt sometimes just it happens. But you shouldn't. It shouldn't be. What would you say 60% of Dr. Andrews surgeries now are with adolescent kids?
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So when MLB put out the pitching injury report, which I would suggest, strongly suggest anybody get a chance to either read the summary or read the document itself that came out in December of 24 and on page.
Let me see how mega brain I can be. I think it's either page 32 or 34 of the report.
There's a bar chart that shows the percentage of UCL repair surgeries performed at the Andrews Institute. So this is Dr. James Andrews, pioneer in the field that were attributed to youth or high school players.
And that number is like a steadily upward increase peaking at around 60% and now kind of stabilizing stabilizing around. Like it's like 50 to 55%, which is a thousand percent avoidable if there's structure in place that doesn't allow these kids to be overworked. And the thing that I, like when I start to kind of connect the dots here, if you have. If we know that we have an injury problem and the statistics bear that out, and that injury is an overuse problem because that's the thing that everybody is exposed to, because there isn't enough structure to control if that's going on.
And if there's kind of like a perception issue where if you go to Instagram and you search the travel baseball hashtag, you're going to find this weird undercurrent of parents and coaches talking about how this environment that we've constructed, and I say, we, we're all in this together.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: We are all in. All in this together.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: If you know that that's a thing. And there's kind of this, like, this undercurrent of acknowledgement that the environment is stressful and the schedule is crazy and it costs too much money and it's potentially injurious, and all of those things are at play.
I get freaked out about the future of our game. And what I'll connect this to is when. When Danny and I were in beautiful Fort Myers, Florida, in December. Wonderful scene at Fort Myers.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Shout out to Fort Myers.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Shout out to Fort Myers.
We're trying to figure out what to do when we're done with baseball for the day. You know, my kid is 16, almost 17. It's like, all right, let's go to the mall. And we go to the mall and we walk by. It's like a foot action or a Foot Locker or something like that. So we walk in and I see a bunch of Jordans just sitting on the shelf. And look, I'm 48 years old. So I'm part of that generation where when the new Jordans came out, like on Saturday mornings, you line upside the store at 5, 6 in the morning, right? You know, you wake up at 7 o' clock in the morning to try to do the online thing, but that time has passed. So I walk into the store and I see these Jordans sitting on the shelf. And I asked my son, I'm like, you guys just don't really care about Jordans anymore like that, do you? And he's like, yeah, not really.
In the point that I make, I'm trying to make is that, like, you can't assume that consumer choices are going to be static. You can't assume that people are always going to make the same choice all the time.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: Blockbuster and Netflix all the time, right?
[00:15:16] Speaker B: So if we know that we have these things in the ether, we have an overuse injury issue that's a result of a lack of systems. We have a little bit of a growing perception that the thing that more people are doing, which is travel and select baseball, is stressful and scary and potentially injurious.
I can't assume that a parent in five to 10 years is going to continue to put their kid in T ball just because I want them to.
Because if the perception changes, why would the consumer choice change?
And like, in my neighborhood, I saw the other day, somebody had a sign up and it was like, spring lacrosse signups. Registration open now. And underneath that it said, america's oldest game.
And as a baseball guy, I understand exactly what you're trying to do. I know exactly what you're trying to do. You're trying to prop up the idea that signing your kid up for lacrosse is not like a, is not like an abnormal choice because the game has been around for even longer than baseball, right? And we tell these stories that baseball is, you know, it's. It's America's sport. It's been around us, you know, since the 18, 1700s, etc. Etc. So the lacrosse guys are over there going like, hey, you know, the Inuits played lacrosse in like the 1100s, but they're trying to steal our customers.
And if I say that, that they're trying to steal customers, that assumes that I'm trying to approach this from a commerce perspective. So let me correct myself. They're trying to steal the future of our game.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yes. Fans, coaches. You know, again, that's what I'm.
Future fans, future coaches, future people. Just people that love baseball. Like, that's. They're trying to. I completely agree.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: That's. That's what they're trying to attack. And they're trying to do that in an opportunity, in a period of time where, like, we might be a little bit exposed. Like, we are exposed.
So if that's a thing that concerns me because.
And it's going to elicit, like, an emotional response for me because I know what baseball did for me.
I know how baseball and my experience of it is a player who wasn't that good. And if I was good at any point in time, I wasn't good enough when it actually mattered.
I still know how the game has changed the way that I deal with life on a daily basis. Right. We talk about baseball being a game of failure, which we understand. What we're actually saying is it's like it's a conduit game of learning.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: It's a game of learning.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: It's a game of learning in life.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: It's learning in life.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: It's a conduit of perspective and process.
And if I understand that that thing is probably largely the reason.
I mean, that and my grandparents.
Right. That my grandparents and my parents, those three things, baseball and the support system of a family that I was lucky enough to have is the reason that I am like a successful adult in any way, shape or form today.
I want more kids to play our game because I want them to experience that benefit. And I believe that our game is uniquely positioned to help them understand that.
But it requires you to play the game long enough to have that perspective be developed. Right. If you go out and play T ball for two years and you bounce out of the sport, man, all that other stuff that we think our game can teach isn't happening. Like, development requires retention.
It requires it. But if you don't approach it with retention being the number one metric we're trying to solve for, you're not going to keep kids long enough in our game that they experience all these transformative qualities that you can learn.
And those kids are going to go play lacrosse. And maybe lacrosse is a conduit for other things in sport. I mean, sure, I'm not a lacrosse guy, I'm a baseball guy, and I have to stump for our thing. So when I see things in our environment, with the ecosystem, in the environment that we've created, where consumers are starting to make different choices, I think we have to respond to that because unlike football, we don't really have the ability to create like a flag version of our game. Right. We can't really create seven ons on sevens because ultimately the game revolves around a pitcher catcher matchup. We need pitching. Like the whole game revolves around it. And when you don't have enough kids who have the skill to do that, the game environment looks bad. So if you think about recreational baseball now, when you've lost a lot of like A level and B level talent to select and club ball, if what rec baseball becomes is an environment where it's just like the C and A D level players and you've also lost the parents and coaches of those A and B level kids, it starts to look really, really bad.
And if those kids go out there and nobody can throw a strike and you've lost all your Good coaches, your good board members and it's not fun. Kids are not going to play our game. They're not going to choose it and their parents aren't going to choose it. And now we're looking at like a future where the game kind of dies from the bottom up.
And you know, that, that really freaks me out. So I think we have to, I think you have to be mindful of these broad things, the gaps in our structure, and try to attack them and solve so that we can keep the game healthy.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Yeah, and a lot of people don't know the numbers, but it's three and a half years is the average lifespan of a baseball player and 10.7 is when they age out. And like those of us that are living this thing want to see those numbers get better because again, doesn't have to be a lot more. But if we can just continue to improve those numbers every year, you're going to look up and those participation numbers in high school are going to be a lot higher.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Yes, but, but in the current term, you know, we have seven year olds playing tournaments with leadoffs.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Yes.
Go back to closing the basis people. Go back to the bases.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: You know, I'm pretty convinced that like the, the reason there is just this simple idea that I've heard other coaches say it, I've probably said it, we got to get them ready. Right? Like we have to get them ready. But if you don't miss the opportunities you have right now to build engagement, build skill at an age relevant level, you're like literally throwing them in the deep end of the pool and they're bad swimmers and you're like, I got to get them ready. Well, if they're drowning, they're not ready, you know, like they're not ready.
So it's not that the intention is bad, it's just kind of like the application of it, I think misses an opportunity to meet the player where they are right now.
You know, like you, you can look at kids that are 7, 8, 9, even 10 year olds and like, man, I wish they all had like a fundamental grasp of leadoff and checking runners and double cuts, etc.
We can wish on it till the cows come home. You know, like hope is a poor development strategy. They're not ready for that. And there's all sorts of other stuff you can get into about like cognitive and physiological development where like the basic decision making process for a child at that level is like really inadequately developed. So it kind of hampers their ability to keep in like most of them to do that successfully. I mean, there's, there's a whole bunch of different layers here, but it's just.
I understand the intention. I think we're just missing opportunities. We're kind of throwing kids in the deep end of the pool and then hoping that they don't die.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: What's your goal here for the next 12 months? What do you, what do you feel like we realistically can accomplish here? Because. Because we are, you and I, we're about solutions. So what are some of the immediate solutions we can get done here in
[00:22:26] Speaker B: the next 12 months in the universal pitch counts, universal reporting side? I think the thing that we can get done in the next 12 months is, number one, get the new pitch count standard built.
So, so what that means is, you know, is it's just Driveline doing some work where we again, use the data that we have on youth, the workload cost of just throwing a ball, because that's the thing that we can quantify.
We take that data, we simulate millions of permutations of additional data for the way that a season would play out, and then we can construct that standard of what we may or may not call Pitchmart 2.0.
I don't know what we're going to call it.
Maybe that's just lazy branding. I can't come up with anything more imaginative. But I think we can develop that pitch count standard, this Revised pitch count 2.0 standard informed by pulse and biomechanics state. I think that's one thing we can get done in the next 12 months. I think in the next 12 months we can stand up the bones of a universal reporting app.
But the other thing that's going to kind of need to get done with that is the political side of things, which is talking to leagues, talking to event providers, talking to showcase companies and getting them part of this conversation.
And you know, you and I were part of a conversation at Major League Baseball last was a week ago, two weeks ago, I don't know. Yeah, a week ago. My life, I've lost complete track where the early signal is that I think we've, we are closer to making this a real thing than we ever have been before.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: This has felt more real than any other time. It's felt.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
And you know, and kind of like to fully flesh out the story, you know, we started this conversation about universal pitch counts universal reporting at the ABCA Youth Baseball Summit in was that November of 24 is when I kind of like first rolled out the idea with the Royals.
No, this wasn't yeah, well, yeah, Royals were there, but this was the one at Augusta, not at the Royals one.
Then we, then we presented that idea to Major League Baseball in March of 25, and then now here we are in March of 26 where more meetings at Major League Baseball and specifically with people who are going to have to kind of choose to participate. So you're talking about big name showcase, tournament and event providers and, you know, I mean, I don't want to. I don't want to. I'm not letting the cat out of the bag. I'm not going to divulge any state secrets. But what I will say is, you know, for me, it was pretty bizarre to have this go from being like an idea that I screamed about on Twitter for probably a decade prior to proposing an idea back in Augusta, Georgia, to meeting with Major League Baseball in March of 25 and then going back to Major League Baseball on March of 26 and having us go around the room and it almost be a. Well, yeah, like, we should just do this. I. It just felt, it felt very, very, very surreal to me because for as long as I've been screaming about this idea, a lot of the pushback has been like, well, you know, we're just never going to, we're not, we're never going to be able to do that. Like, we're never going to be able to. That's never going to be able to happen. And like, you know, for me personally, like, I. There's nothing makes me happier when you tell me something I cannot do. Like, like, like, please, please tell me what I can't do. Please tell me what I can't accomplish, because I bet I can prove you wrong. And I'm either gonna get this thing done or I'm gonna be taking a dirt nap. Like, one of two things are gonna happen.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: And I'm on the flip side of that because I've grown up around the game of baseball my whole life. I am like, anything as is possible with baseball people.
Like, I've seen it my entire life where people have made changes over time and, and you get people to come together. So, like, I am of the other side where I'm like, I think anything is possible if you get everybody in the room together to talk it out and create ideas and you come to solutions and you're not always going to agree with things. But I, I've seen baseball people adjust to so much over time, and I'm like, I think anything is possible for us to get.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: No, I think you're Right. But there's just been this weird, this weird kind of undercurrent from people that are like, well, you know, youth baseball, like, you just can't, you can't solve it. But like, this is the W. Edward Deming quote, man. Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it gets. And we've had youth baseball exist in the space where there wasn't a system, there wasn't a controlling body, and there was no agreement by the people at the top level about what was appropriate for our customers. But if you get these people in the room, these men and women who say what you want about their, their business interests and where they're trying to drive the thing commercially, even if you had the most sarcastic opinion about those people, consider that they also know that they need customers and they need customers to make money.
You can approach this thing from a, hey, we should keep children safe. You also approach this thing from, like, you need customers and you want this customer pool to expand. And no matter which way you kind of get someone, you're still trying to drive them to the same place, which is the systems that we have are inadequate.
Better systems can be developed and all we need to do is get the right men and women in a room to have productive conversations about, hey, how is this going to work? How does this work for my business? How can I operationally execute this thing and include them in these conversations? Right. Like, you know, one of the things that we're going to have to deal with is that some of the providers in the space have access to staff that can make this thing happen easier. Right. Like, like Perfect Game and pbr, typically at their events they have somebody who's going to run something. So it's very easy to kind of just like logistically and operationally add this as a task to that, to that guy or girl.
Little League baseball, different deal. Right. It's a volunteer driven organization. Nobody's getting paid. But the thing we do have in little League baseball is again, you have invested parents.
And if all we need to do is find a way to reconcile, hey, team tone, team scored it this way. Visiting team scored it this way. Relative to pitch count, relative to who pitched when. These are solvable software problems. This isn't like a blocker.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: You know, I'm incentivizing the people to do it. Like that's. Again, if you incentivize the people to keep track and do it right, again, there's ways to incentivize people to do this.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So I don't know man, you know, after we. We had lunch, after the meeting, and then I got in the. You know, in a cab to go to the. Go to the airport, and I'm just kind of like, sitting there. I'm like, like, are we actually. Like, this thing's gonna be a thing? And again, I'm. I don't want to make light of the fact that there's a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done. Yes, ton of work. That there is a tremendous amount of work. I think there are some. Some.
Some. Some substantial questions about who owns it, who's responsible for it that I don't know. That we've kind of like, all the way drilled all the way down, you know, and. But I don't know, man. You know, I. Sitting in that room and hearing the commitment from organizations that a couple. I was. I was really kind of surprised, but it. But it just. I don't know. I mean, I think it says a lot. And again, you can take kind of like the very, you know, the. The dark perspective on this and just say, well, these people agreed to it just because they're kind of like. They think that this is the political winds of change. They want to be on the right side of history, whatever. Like, I don't care as long as
[00:29:59] Speaker A: we get it done.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: I don't care if you care if this is. If this is the Hague.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: And you come in and, like, you're signing, like, World War II peace accords just because you're trying to protect your position or because you think it's the right thing to do, I don't care. And I certainly recognize that, like, post World War II peace accords are probably a poor equivalent for pitch rules in Little League. But the point that I'm making is I don't care how or why we get there, but the fact that we're kind of acknowledging that a better system needs to be built, and we are acknowledging that a better system can't be built, and we understand how.
Man, all we need to do is just cross some eyes and dots and t's. And I think in.
I think between 24 to 36 months from now, the landscape of youth baseball is going to look drastically different.
And some of that is going to be because of what we're doing on the universal pitch count, universal reporting side. Some of that is going to be because of the way that technology is going to change our game.
Some of that is going to be because of the rise of private equity influence and youth baseball. All of these things are going to happen.
But to me, the one thing that makes all of them work better is a better fundamental underlying system at the bottom of that stack. And the one thing that we should be able to control for is player health and safety. That means universal pitch counts and again, universal reporting systems.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Do you envision warm up and recovery as part of pitch smart 2.0 too?
[00:31:21] Speaker B: I think there needs to be, like, a strong educational component to all of this. So. So when people say to me, oh, you know, you just need to educate parents or coaches like, like heard, Chef. I agree, but trying heard.
But I think that's one of those things that, like, I can't control. Like, I think there needs to be speed limits on freeways.
I also think that everyone would be better off driving a sedan instead of an SUV because the center of gravity is lower and your handling and braking and acceleration performance is going to be better. One of those things that I can mandate, right? Like, what are those things I can mandate? I can mandate a speed limit. I can mandate rules around pitch count and workload moderation.
I would educate the crap out of customers about, hey, that suv, like, it might look tough and you feel good because you're higher than everybody else on the road, but, like, you're literally making it more likely that, like, when you go to slam on the brakes because somebody brake checks you in front of you, there's too much weight that gets you here and your braking performance is bad. You're going to rear end somebody who hurts yourself or hurts somebody else.
So. So when it comes to, you know, warm ups and in any type of, like, education, yeah, man, that, that needs to be heavy. And I think that there's also some opportunities that you could amplify that signal. Right? And like, one of the most obvious ones to me is what we're doing with Little League with the Little League World Series on espn.
This is something that I was personally involved with promoting along with Tracy Tangway several years ago. We tried to get something going with Little League International to have them adopt, like, a mandatory dynamic warm up.
And I still strongly believe at the bottom of my heart is if, like, what you see in the first 90 seconds of that broadcast on ESPN is both of those teams on the field together doing something that is holistically health benefit to all of those players, that there is a tremendous signal that's being sent there not only about what should be the community environment of Little League baseball, but also for priority, for health. And if you want to have the conversation about how it's going to Increase performance as well. Like, hey man, I'm your huckleberry. Like I'm super down.
Dynamic warm up is going to help you perform better and it's going to help you perform more safely, like straight up. But I think that there is a signal opportunity to be sent there when you have, hey, let's get both the teams on the field. We're going to both run a 10 in a 10 minute dynamic warm up together.
Together. And if you can do that in little league of baseball, why can't you do that at a PG showcase, right? Why can't you do that all over the place?
I, I think that's one of those things that like, I'm probably more likely to be able to educate the benefits of. I, you know, if you could, you know, I still live it.
Yeah.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: I mean, I still live it.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: Yeah. It's just, it's the, it's, it's the lowest cost, highest benefit thing that I think we can get better at. It's literally free and you know, like.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: And doesn't take long. It's free and doesn't take long because
[00:34:23] Speaker B: if you're one of those coaches, like I was where like I wanted to get to the field somewhere between an hour to 45 before my game because I'm kind of using that front part of the, of the warmup is literally just a. We're doing a little bit of practice, right? I'm layering a little bit of practice before every game that we have.
I understand that like in that construction, those 10 minutes of a dynamic, the 10 minutes you might spend on a dynamic warmup are.
That's, that's a high, high leverage, right? But if you understand that those 10 minutes of a good dynamic are going to help your throwing be better, it's going to help your hitting performance get better. It's going to help your defensive performance get better, which ultimately helps your team get better. Then it's the easiest 10 minutes to spend and we could put out all the educational material in the world about ways that you can do that. And again, this is one of those things where it's baseball and you, me and another coach might all have three different opinions about the best dynamic warmup that we all might prefer. But the thing we're going to agree on is the need for a dynamic warmup of one capacity or another.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: How proud are your skills? Skills at scale.
I'm proud of you.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: Your book, I mean, you know.
Yeah, man.
So I wrote a book called Skills of Skill Complete Youth Baseball Training Manual.
It's for anybody. That's like a real baseball psychopath. If, you know, the Ron Polk book of Baseball, it's just about the same size, which I say to say, you know, I poured my absolute guts into that thing, man.
And, you know, I've tried to.
I tried to try to give a shortcut to anybody that's going to read it for, like, all the things that I've learned in, you know, I guess when I. When I publish it. I'd probably been coaching for 13 years because it's been out for about two.
I'm just trying to give you a shortcut, man. Like, I had to learn a lot of lessons over the course of those 13 years. I went into this thing coaching kids the way that I was coached, um, which wasn't necessarily the best way. Cause again, we had learned more information.
Um, and I tried to be really open to. To learning at a period of time, but there was also a period of time where I was like a bad youth baseball coach. And. And I need to be really upfront and honest about that because the point that I'm trying to make is that, like, just because you start as. As maybe not the best possible coach you can be doesn't mean that you can't change it.
So. So, you know, the information that we try to put together in the book is not only about, like, the technical stuff, right? About how to do some of the drills that we would advocate for you to drill in order to produce, like, a really well moving child.
And, you know, weirdly, it still makes me feel a little bit weird for my own son to kind of be like the.
The poster child du jour for this thing. But the reality is, is that, like, he's the best case study that I have, you know, And I'm. And I am the. I'm the coach dad, man. I can't. I'm not going to apologize for that. I accept because that's how I started this thing, you know, Like, I went to a little league meeting.
My daughter was registered for T ball for that first year, and they were like, who wants to coach? And I had a pulse. So I raised my hand because I used to play a little bit of ball. And now, you know, 15 years later, you know, I look back, a lot of the stuff that I did as a young coach, not only in, like, the way that I taught the skill, but the way that I treated my athletes.
And I do have a certain amount of shame about that because I knew that I missed opportunities to meet them where they are. And make it fun and make it engaging and communicate better instead of man. When I started as a youth baseball coach, all the things I talk about, about, like, one carrot on the end of one stick, that was the way that I coached it.
I didn't know any better. I had to learn a lot.
So, you know, in so much as it matters, you know, the Skills at Scale book is not just like, the technical stuff of, like, how to teach it, but I try to burn a lot of calories about, like, how do you understand children?
I. I'm a little bit of like an amateur developmental psychologist. If I could split myself in two, I would go get that psychology degree instead of just like, needling around on the Internet. But to me, all of those calories are burned with, like, the same intentions. Like, I have to understand. I have to understand the player and I have to understand what they're capable of because I'm asking to do something that they're just generally not capable of. I'm setting them up for a weird type of failure. Not the type of failure when the game is going to teach you to take ownership of process and take ownership and accountability for, like, what you can and can't do to affect the outcome.
It's square hole, round peg, you know, it's square hole, round peg. And I see a video of somebody who used to play major league baseball on the Internet telling me that there's like, one way to swing the bat. And then I asked my kid to go do that thing. And because my child is a child and my child is a small adult, they fail. And then I'm like, you're such a failure. And I construct training environments that regurgitate that failure, message them over and over and over.
Instead of helping them have a training environment where they can construct a set of movements that are decided to solve a problem and they're going to learn, you know, so. Yeah, man. I mean, I don't know. Sometimes I wish I had maybe made the book not so dense because I do write. I want to write another one.
But I think what I might do is at the end of this journey, you know, whenever. Whenever Danny's like, you know, done, done, or like, you know.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's. There's some stuff because again, like, I, you know, when he hit that grand slam in the first high school game this year, which, again, which. That's his first high school home run ever, like, he. He hit the one on the building in summer and then comes out and does this one, it's impossible. To not get choked up and emotional about it because I can go back and look at that video and you know, bags under my eyes were lighter, beard was a lot more black and a lot less gray.
And it's just been, it's been the greatest privilege to be able to have this experience with my, both of my kids for, for this duration of time.
And I know that there were some things that I did when I was a young coach and certainly a young parent that you know, man, I, I don't know. You know, the, the difference between him like still wanting to play this game for as long as possible is he does as a 17 year old, not necessarily a foreigner inclusion that we're going to get there when he's 11.
You know, like in the slides that I have in this most recent coaching clinic, I have, I have a picture of the first day that I was coaching him in T ball and the system that we used for player management when they were hitting on T ball is we got buckets and we had these kids sit on the bucket and just wait there until it was their turn to come up and hit.
Side note there, please, for the love of God, if you're, if you're like a T ball administrator, just break these kids into cohorts of like six. Just, just, just do that, right? Do that. And probably just don't even have them play three up three and have a baseball. Just have them like practice and skill. But I digress. So on the slide, one of it is like for that first game of coaching T ball and the other's from the last game that I coached him, the last practice we had before his little league majors all star season.
That transition is not a foregone conclusion because again the average age kids quit this game is right around 10. The average time they spend in the game is around 3ish years.
Getting from 12 year old majors to a 17 year old who's talking to colleges about like trying to figure out where he's going to play. Also not a foregone conclusion.
And on the one hand it's fine because I don't need my kid to play baseball. And this is a message that I've, you know, reiterated to him over the years.
[00:41:47] Speaker A: It's been an expensive experience to throw out to parents too, like those of us that have been around it. It's not because the parent willed their child to do it, it's because their child wanted to do it.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: This is the intrinsic motivation thing again.
But just because you're intrinsically motivation motivated does not mean that you're also bulletproof. Some, some of the signals and experiences you might have. Like, you know, my wife reminded me three, I think three summers ago, he had a really, really tough summer. As a, I think it was 15 year old summer, something like that. 14 or 15.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: Hey, is this your next fail forward moment? Because I thought you told me he was going to quit.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: He was, he was having a tough summer. I don't think he was ever going to quit. But he, he definitely, well, he told, he told, he told my wife. He was like, I'm, I don't know, man. I don't know if I want to continue to do this and if I'm going to tell the truth about that story. Part of that is because of me.
Like, that, that's because of me. So, so when I'm talking about the fact that like, you know, I wrote a book a couple years ago as if I'm some sort of like highly evolved, I'm completely immune to any of this type of struggle or stress that's involved with being a sport parent, like, no, I'm still here.
And if I'm writing about something, it's just because I've probably failed and screwed it up before. So I'm trying to learn from it or I also understand what the ideal is and I'm trying to hold myself accountable to that same ideal as I would anybody else in the equation.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: Yeah, but you are a self actualized human being.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Well, I'm trying.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: You are.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: I'm trying.
Separate conversation about the amount of anxiety that I drag around.
Yeah, man, you know, he had a really tough summer. And you know, my wife and I were just talking the other night, she was like, you know, he, he said to her that he's like, I'm sure, I'm not sure I want to continue to do this.
And, and I think that's the thing where like, man, at the end of the day I keep coming back to like, development requires retention.
And when you have these kids who specifically they grow up in these households where their parent is in the sport in some way, shape or form and the parent coaches, you have to acknowledge that there's just like some weird like parental approval, power dynamic behavior modeling stuff that's involved with all of this stuff. And for years now, you know, I've had these conversations with Danny in the car where I'm like, I don't need you to play, I don't need you to be a baseball player. And you could, you know, you could be an optometrist. Or a rocket scientist or, you know, you could. You could be in business. I don't care.
I just want you to do the thing that you feel passionate about. And when I say that to him, he always gives me this dirty look, and he's like. And silently, he's kind of like, giving me the finger, and it's. And it's fine. And I kind of want him to have that response, you know, Like, I kind of want him to have that response. I kind of want him to be like, okay, you.
But I also want him to choose it for his own self. And if there's any way that I can provide safety there, it's by telling him that, like, my love is not contingent upon your participation or performance in this stupid sport.
It's not. I. I love the game deeply and desperately. I have since I was a kid and by nature or nurture. I met a girl in a bar, we got married and made people, and. And both of them have that same attachment to the game at this stage, because I know that the game finishes itself with everybody, right? Everybody is going to be done at some point.
All I could want is for him to get to that point and decide when he's done for himself. And ideally not have him stay in the game because he thinks it, like, he needs to make that choice, because that's the way that I would give him affection or approval.
And if I can do that well enough, I hope.
I hope that I am giving him the freedom to approach competition and the opportunity for either grand success or grand failure and everything in between and embrace any and all of those potential outcomes and just. And just move into them headlong, almost recklessly. Because I'm pretty convinced that the only way that you can perform at the highest level is to be able to have that type of, like, reckless acknowledgement that I'm okay with the outcomes here, but when you're talking about children, there are cognitive. Their cognitive brain development reasons why it inhibits them from having that type of. Type of approach to the game. But that doesn't mean we can't help teach it.
So, like, you know, the best moments that I ever had coaching, I think were ones that I did that thing and the worst ones when I did the opposite it.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: Are you still lifting heavy?
[00:46:25] Speaker B: Of course. Of course, Ryan. Despite my doctors, despite my doctor's recommendation.
Yeah, man.
[00:46:31] Speaker A: No, Devin's still trying to throw up a lot of weight later in life,
[00:46:35] Speaker B: and I. Yeah, man, it's.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: I agree to disagree on that, but.
[00:46:39] Speaker B: Well, so. So I don't Know if you can see this. So my, my ring finger on my left hand doesn't really, like, work all the way right now. My elbow's banged up and I still went, and I still still went 295 for a single last night. Because why not?
I, I, I put this meme up on my Twitter and my Instagram yesterday. It was like, it was like a picture of a guy sitting on a bench and the message was like waiting for the right part of the song so I can get under the bar and potentially injure myself. Yes, for sure. Yeah, man, I'm, I'm going to burn, I'm going to burn the candle until it's gone. And, but what I also need to do is I need to do a better job of being smart about when and how I go like really into deep waters that way.
So, so I'm trying to do a little bit of that thing, but, but yeah, man, I have a hard time
[00:47:29] Speaker A: putting it down, but when I do take a little bit of a break, it's actually better when I get back to it.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, right, right now I'm going really heavy. Like, you know, once every like week, week and a half, which is a working cadence. I need to get back up for it. I was in the middle of like a, a little bit of a push up competition with the Driveline trainer, Eric Kozak. Kozak then dusted me. I got hurt and he continued to take off and I think he hit like 355 on bench. So I got a, I got a ways to go. But, you know, you'll, you'll find me in like a men's, in a men's strength, power, powerlifting competition at some point once, once my squat numbers stop being embarrassing.
[00:48:04] Speaker A: All right, where can people find you? And what are some final thoughts before I let you go?
[00:48:08] Speaker B: Devon Morgan. D E V E N M O R G A N. You can find me on Twitter.
You can find us what we do for the Driveline Academy youth.
Obviously you can find us at
[email protected] supportivelinebaseball.com 425-523-4030 yeah, and man, I, I don't know, you know, final thoughts. I guess I'll do two things. Number one, if you're not a member of the abca, I just, from the bottom of my heart, I would really suggest that you, you really give that a, give that a look. You know, the 75 bucks you're going to spend on that membership is not only going to pay for itself because of some of the benefits you get. But you're. You're exposing yourself and surrounding yourself to some of just the best minds in this game. And it doesn't mean you need to agree with every single person, but if you burn a little bit of calorie, I think you can have a tremendously informed perspective on how to do this thing better.
And I guess that's just the second thing, is that, you know, what we are trying to do at Driveline, both with the kids that we train and with the kids that we have in our teams, is change what their future looks like.
And right now, that means that we put out a product when it comes to our teams that's a little bit divergent from conventional behavior in the space because we're not going to play a year. Wrong schedule. I'm going to keep you in a training configuration for a year. But that training configuration is going to include rest and downtime. It's going to include training, it's going to include a lot of practice, and then we're going to go play games when it's appropriate.
And that's a little bit, you know, it feels a little bit swimming upstream sometimes compared to, like a lot of the other tournaments or organizations do. Which is not to say that we're the only ones that are trying to do it the right way. I'm not saying that either. But, you know, we are trying to do something highly specific.
And at the end of the day, man, I just, I.
I want more people to be able to experience this type of transformation. So whether you go and get the free youth training PDF that we have, whether you buy the Skills of Scale book, whether you listen to the Driveline Academy podcast, the world's most dangerous youth baseball podcast, which you should listen after the ABCA podcast, or whether you come in and train and assess at one of our facilities or join a team.
The thing I'm trying to teach your child, and I'm trying to teach you is process.
Like that. That's. It's process and perspective.
You know, the one thing that has been a constant in my life since probably, I don't know, 2016 or 2017, whatever it was published, is somewhere between, like four to 12 times a year. I will watch a video we produced that you can find on YouTube. It's called Casey Weathers, How Good Am I? The Casey Weather Story.
And one of the things that Weather says in that video, which he did as a speech, once he had hung it up, he did a speech to all of our Trainees who were in the gym one summer at Driveline. And he goes, hard work gives you honesty.
And that's the thing.
And I think that this game is a conduit for understanding that concept. And I think that concept is something that can both improve and define the way that you approach the rest of your life.
I tacitly acknowledge that all these kids we bring in are not going to go play professional baseball. They're not going to go play college baseball because that's just an impossible outcome. But the thing I'm very confident that we can do is we can use youth baseball as a training ground to train 90 foot baseball players that be our specific extension. And if we can get a kid to that level where they can spend four years playing high school baseball on a 90 foot field, I'm very confident we can teach these kids a way to approach their lives in a way that is more positive, that is going to carry with them until they're dead. Last night my wife and I went to a city council meeting because two years ago, Wyatt Tonkin, who was the legendary coach in my area, he was the coach of Sherwood baseball for 27 years.
Wyatt passed away two years ago.
My son was the last varsity call up that Wyatt made before he went in the hospital and ultimately passed away. So. So we had had a proposal put forward to the city council to have our local field renamed after Wyatt.
They initially had rejected that proposal.
So last night, even after 400 signatures and all this community support, there were a bunch of us that went showed up at the city council meeting and we all spoke.
And one of the people who came in that I didn't know was a kid that played for Wyatt a decade ago.
He drove an hour just to come talk to the city council meeting. And he's kind of explaining like the impact that this man made on his life that carries over into adulthood.
I think that that is a thing that our game can do. I think the more coaches that we have that have this perspective, the more of those outcomes we can create.
And all I'm trying to do with Dryline is kind of take a data driven and a science informed perspective on doing the exact same thing that Wyatt Tonkin did. So the good news is that last night they did vote to name that field. It's not, it's going to be wide Tonkin Field at Meridian Park.
Our community is being emboldened and enriched because we are taking a guy who put three plus decades into this thing and lifting him up so that someday somebody's going to go to that field or. Oh, it's where it talk and field. Why is it called talking field? Google Wyatt Tonkin. Now, you know, that is the thing that our game is capable of. We are capable of, like, creating these kids who are, whose lives are enriched by the game. And then some of them eventually coach and they do the same thing for the next generation. And like, man, that's, that's all we're trying to do.
[00:53:42] Speaker A: Love you, sir. Appreciate your time.
[00:53:43] Speaker B: Love you. Love you, brother. Anytime.
[00:53:46] Speaker A: Attababy that will be.
There's a bright future for youth baseball with the people we have involved in the ABCA on the youth and travel committees.
Devin has done so much for us moving things forward.
We know it's a huge undertaking, but we will get there. Thanks again to John Litchfield, Zach Hale, Matt west, and the ABCA office for all the help on the podcast.
Feel free to reach out to me via email our brownleeabca.org Twitter, Instagram or TikTok Coachbey owner Square ABCA or direct message me via the MyABCA app. This is Ryan Brownlee signing off for the American Baseball Coaches Association. Thanks and leave it better for those
[00:54:21] Speaker B: behind and the world keeps on turning and your life is not for your name and you know that way Yep
[00:54:37] Speaker A: Wait for another day and the world
[00:54:44] Speaker B: will always return as your life Never for your name and you know that way Wait for another day.
