Has anyone heard any rumors of the Baltimore Metro League folding after the 2008?

It's not well defined who takes over for BMB when R Faw / B. Allen retire, or whether BMB youth baseball will be absorbed into existing county and travel leagues.

The league will return in 2008, having been in existance for 32 years next year. I know the BMB is very proud of each year of existance and often cites the following question. WHAT OTHER LEAGUE CAN MAKE THAT STATEMENT?

I was asked that question recently and stated:
"I know of three youth/amateur Maryland based baseball leagues that have been contiquously operating and in existance longer than BMB (founded in 1977).
RBBA (1954) (who remembers Twinbrook Boys Club?), MCBBA (1953) AND
the CGL (1947). The CGL been in existence for over 60 years and is one of the oldest and most established amateur summer baseball leagues in the nation.

cheers
Bear

An email was sent early in December by Roger. Apparently he was considering folding the BMB, but changed his mind. The email stated that BMB will return in 2008. I believe a league meeting is supposed to be held either in late December or early January. That could all change at any time though.

My first year coaching in the BMB was an eye opener. From 1989 to 1997, it was some great baseball, coaching against great teams, coaches and players. I enjoyed the friendly antagonism we shared as coaches. Roger worked his butt off to make sure the league was administrated properly. Hope it continues, but every thing runs its course.

I can understand if Roger is a little frustrated. We had always told my son that BMB was the way to go. However, since Larry Sheets and Ripken baseball now have their own travel teams, there has been a big drop off in the available talent pool.

Now my son is playing full time travel ball and not BMB. The other probelm as I see it is that right now there are just too many teams. A dad gets upset with the coach and starts a new team. See Frederick Hustlers as one example.

The MD Cardinals lost most of their kids to Larry Sheets. I know Carl Etchison is "reloading" but even so, our boys are competing not with kids from MD but with kids from south and west. The watering down of all the MD leagues is a shame.

Your kid almost has to play full time travel and go to a private HS to even have a chance today from MD.

The other suggestion I would make to BMB is to allow more flexibility in terma of allowing teams to play USSSA and AAU baseball and tournaments in general. The NABF and AABC are just not the same. I have seen the teams and my boy played against the Orioles U11 team that won up in NY.

They would be lucky to make it out of pool play at the AAU world series. Ask the Cardinals U11 team from last year that played at Disney and is there any doubt they were a top 2 or 3 team in the state.

It would be nice to have an exclusive travel league in Maryland that only accepts a certain level of play. See USSSA AA AAA and Major set up as an example to get started.

BMB used to be that league but now there are just too many teams. Maybe that will turn around. That would be nice and it would be a whole lot less expensive than this full time travel ball.

Agreed that too many teams exist. That was a major problem we faced back in the early and mid 90's. When I first started coaching at the 17-18 level, we had 6 or 7 teams...and they were all real good. Not to mention the tremendous legion teams in the immediate area (ie. Severna Park, Mt. Airy). Every time Roger tried to discourage some one from entering the league (no proven track record of success), he would be threatened with a law suit. Some would say to fight it, but to what end? It would cost the league lots of money, and we would probably win, but who knows?

With respect to NABF/AABC, at the older age groups (18U), they are still the cream of the crop. AABC is and will be, for the forseeable future, the best affilitation in the country and the 18U age level. NABF and the others have sort of capitulated to the showcase mentality where everybody wants a guarantee of so many games.

By the way Bill L., want constitutes full-time travel ball now? Does it refer to a team that pretty much just goes away to tournaments?

You right regarding the older ages and AABC.

Fulltime travel means playing in tournaments only.

It tends to be very expensive but it is really hard to get the kids enough quality ABs in MD in the travel leagues. I include MCBA, MMTA, and BMB. The top teams in all leagues usually have a couple pitchers and what I do like about BMB and their schedule is it really forces the development of more pitchers at the younger ages in my opinion. Just not the consistant level of competition I think is best for the boys long term.

Shame about the lawyers. That explains the problem. I think Shakespeare had a point.

Bill

I'm curious about something...

What do you hope to accomplish by spending your entire spring and summer living out of hotel rooms playing a constant schedule of tournaments all over the country? Especially with players 11 and 12 years old? How would it be appreciably better than finding a good competitive league and playing on a team with an excellent coach? You say you're looking for quality ABs, I hate to break it to you, but you're not going to see the pitchers who are freaks of nature until late Sunday afternoon - if you're lucky enough to survive til that late in the tournament. Other than that, you're going to see kids who are no better than what you'll see in your league competition.

Granted, BMB competition isn't as 'elite' as it was years ago because they've let too many teams into the league. But at the same time, there is still some very stout competition available. I don't see why a combined BMB/local tournament (ECTB, SATB, etc.) schedule would be a bad thing. This whole new "National Travel Team" concept really cracks me up. Everyone is constantly searching for some new angle to use to pitch people in hopes of recruiting players who were previously unavailable. What will happen in 5 years when everyone and their brother has a "national travel team"? I guess then they'll start international travel teams and play against teams in the Caribbean and Japan. Where will it all end?

I just haven't seen strong evidence that has shown me that the kids who live out of a suitcase do significantly better than the kids who play competitive league ball(generally speaking)when they play at the high school varsity level. I personally think it comes down to individual work ethic, and the quality of instruction that they receive on a personal level. Perhaps the difference may lie with the individual coach. I've seen some rec teams who have fantastic coaching and the kids really prosper. And I've seen a TON of "travel" teams where the coaches are merely recruiters and collectors of talent (and the teams win), but the kids really don't improve themselves at all.

If you're considering going to all this trouble and expense because you think it's going to help your kid get a ticket to a premier D1 school, think again. There are a lot of kids who are listed in other threads who are outstanding players, and a lot of them will end up at small schools or even JuCos. And a lot of them have played travel ball since they were very young. It's a numbers game, and it also has a lot to do with luck.

Yeah,My coach brought this up at our team meeting couple weeks ago. As a player in the metro league now,the strong competitive teams are now slimming down.Their is only maybe 7-8 strong teams where i when i was 13 and 14 every team had solid players throughout the team.But my 17u team is playing metro but also doing a 8-10 tourneys so we are sorta a half metro/half tourney team and not just being metro.Seems like they changed somethings.


*Teams are now off throuh a period of time on 4th of july

*They will help pay for expenses for top 4 playoff teams(im guessing tournament fees to NABF,Dizzy Dean,etc)

*Playoffs,where in the past it was just top 3 teams in east and west get tourament bids.

I don't know about other kids but my son loves to go away to hotels. The kids love playing all these teams from around the country and making new friends.

I also gotta tell you I miss less work with tournament ball than I do with leagues. Getting around MD for 6:00 pm game times can take longer than driving to Richmond on most week nights. Don't forget that all the coaches have to maintain their own fields too or charge enough so they can hire someone to maintain the fields. So in the end the boys play more games against better competition,without the hassle of field maintenence, and without traffic during weekdays. We also can schedule a weekend or week off for RR or even more practice.

As far as attracting a premier D1 school I think it would be premature at 11,12,or even 13 to start making plans for college. Right now it is just a dream. May as well shoot high

In response to the comment regarding quality ABs. Based on actual game experiance this fall, I can assure you that we saw more quality ABs in one weekend then my son will likely see in a month in the Maryland leagues. In one tournament alone in Virginia we saw pitching always 60+ and we faced at least 4 kids throwing at least in the upper 60s with one kid clocked at 72 mph all day with a change up. Every team could hit. Every team played outstanding defense and every team could pitch too. This is at 12. I know there are kids in Metro that can really get it up too but far too few in my opinion. I find this is especially true from the U12 and below. There may be 5-7 decent teams in U12 BMB and in my opinion 2-3 very good teams.

In addition, you can win in Maryland with a flame thrower and lots of pop in the bats. A great pitcher in MD will shut a MD team down so the defense really does not have to learn how to play in my opinion.

Go south and there is almost no such thing as a strikeout from a batter at 11 and 12.

There is a reason more ball players come from the south and west and it has some to do with weather but I think it has more to do with playing great competition week in and week out. It also lets my kid know that while you may be okay up in Maryland the boys down south will kick your butt and then stomp on you when you are down. Our kids are not battle hardened in general in my opinion.

I would love for BMB to really limit the teams to 6 or 7 top teams but that does not appear likely.I would like to see a premier combined BMB league comprised of the top teams from all three travel leagues but alas politics trumps this idea every time. Can you imagine MCBA, BMB, and MMTA cooperating. You could rotate out the weakest team each year and bring in a top team from one of the other leagues each year. Then we would have that competition game in and game out that will help the boys put in play what they have been working for in practice. We might even pick some type of All Star team to go down south and show them that we can play too. That might mean my son does not make one of those 6 or 7 teams but that might be a good teaching opportunity too.


Bill

Excellent discussion. I agree with many of the points that R Ringer made...but like Bill said, the landscape is a changing.

Bill L., as the manager for the Columbia Reds 17-18 team for about 15 years (had to resign in 2003 due to the death of my dad), I can tell you that the most important thing you can do for your son is get him playing for a team that is well coached.

Now I have never coached anything other than 17-18 and my son's T-ball team last spring. We were fortunate enough to have a sponsor who was a visionary with respect to getting kids exposure. He suggested early on that we coach the kids on how to play the game, and invite every college coach we could to come see us play. We would have coaches from Maryland, Towson, UMBC, Delaware, Xavier, Ohio U., West Virginia, Frostburg, St. Mary's, etc... at our games, cause we would take the time to invite them. Other Metro teams would do the same, cause we all new we had players worth watching.

At the lower age groups, having a coach to teach them proper hitting/fielding/throwing mechanics, playing situational (mental) baseball, and just instilling confidence in them really means more than going to tournaments all the time to face top quality competition. Hey, we got out of the Metro in 1999 because the quality of competition was so mediocre at the time. But we were lucky enough to have an established coaching staff with a proven track record.

I look at arguably one of the finest amateur coaches in this state, and I can tell you his players benefitted so much more from playing for him rather than worrying about the level of competition. Players don't get better at game time...they get better during practice time. Jim McCandless' Severna Park American Legion teams were the most well coached teams we ever faced (and we played teams from all over the country). He got every ounce of talent each boy on his roster had to offer. Even during the later years when their legion league had dwindled a little, his players were consistently improving to the point where the local high school was a major power. His track record of putting players on college rosters was near unmatched in this area.

Bottom line, you and your son are having a great time together. Keep doing what you are doing...it is working for you all. Before you know it, these times will be over. You obviously have thought this out, and if it works for your son, then don't change a thing.

Larry,
I could not agree more. The most important thing at the early ages should be fundamentals. Wins and losses should matter but the proper technique. Over time with the proper repetition the skills as well as the wins will come. Also I agree Jim still to this day runs a fantastic program at Severna Park. We scrimmage them every year and have come to expect a well taught and fundamental game.
This year I am doing a so called tournament team at 14u. Mostly local tourny's with a couple within 2 hrs and a couple far. For me it was not the league competition or anything but I think you can get more out of the kids with a tourny on the weekend a midweek pickup game along with PRACTICES. I personally don't think kids get enough practice. Skills are learned at practice not games. Some of issues I have with some teams is it is just game after game. Anyway just my opinion...Merry Christmas to all as I do not tend to post all that often..