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Comment by chasely | Hacker News Reader

A really good baseball glove is one of those "buy it for life" purchases. My dad played college ball in the late 50's and had a Nokona glove. When we played catch and he was teaching me baseball in the 90's, he used the same glove as in college.

But, I would bet that the biggest threat to Nokona is not cheaper gloves produced overseas, but the decline in youth baseball participation compared to other sports. Though perhaps a rapid decline in the number of kids participating in football could mean some of them playing baseball instead. I suspect that my kids would end up playing soccer since it's the only sport I watch these days.

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Yeah, baseball participation seems WAAAAY down. Kids play in leagues (I don't know if participation is increasing or decreasing) but almost never play pickup (ie, informal, unorganized) baseball "for fun" anymore which I think is a leading indicator of a sport's future.

I saw some kids playing a pickup game a few months ago and it blew my mind. Hadn't seen that in years, or since.

When I was a kid in the 1980s it was not uncommon to play baseball or whiffleball on a pickup basis with one's friends.

When my dad was a kid in a major US city in the 40s and 50s he said you didn't even need to gather friends; there was pretty much always a baseball game or three being play amongst kids at the park that you could get into.

It's sad, in a way, but (as much as I love it) baseball's kind of an awkward sport because you need so many people to play anything resembling an actual game.

(I know you can have a lot of fun playing catch with two people, or just pitching and hitting with two or three people... spent hundreds of hours doing these things myself)

I coached youth baseball for a long time and every year I would ask for a quick show of hands for how many kids had actually been to a major league game, and then how many kids had watched baseball on TV. The numbers for both dropped every year, but the TV numbers were in free fall. Talking to the parents, most reported that they were unwilling to subscribe to premium channels to watch baseball, and that they wanted to limit the amount of time that their kids spent on electronics.

The net effect was that we had to work with every player as if they had no previous exposure to the game. Every rule, every strategy, and every technique had to be explained from scratch.

Kids were more likely to bring a soccer ball to practice and want to kick it around the outfield before a game than take batting practice.

The other thing killing the sport is time. We see lacrosse teams arrive at the field next to us, play a game, and go home just in the time that we are stretching out, throwing, doing batting practice and infield warmups before a game. The lax kids (and parents) are home firing up the BBQ before the first pitch has been thrown.

Oooof. Doesn't bode well for the future of the game :-/

   The net effect was that we had to work with every player as if they had no previous exposure to the game. Every rule, every strategy, and every technique had to be explained from scratch.

Yeah! And kids can't even throw a baseball any more. That used to be the one "basic" sports skill every kid had: even if you didn't play baseball you could throw a ball because we played "wall ball" and other games.

But, even though it's sad, I'm fine with it. Things change. Really, as long as kids are playing sports... I think that's fine. Baseball (as much as I love the game) is arguably one of the worst sports for kids because you spend 90% of your time waiting for your turn at bat, or waiting for the ball to be hit to you.

I still think baseball has the best simple pleasures of any sport, though. Hitting a baseball and catching a baseball. Still my two favorite things in sports.

    The other thing killing the sport is time. We see lacrosse teams arrive at the field next to us, play a game, and go home just in the time that we are stretching out, throwing, doing batting practice and infield warmups before a game. The lax kids (and parents) are home firing up the BBQ before the first pitch has been thrown.

Yeah. People are busier these days. I think we're way too busy these days, but regardless of what I think, the reality is that kids and parents need sports that fit into this new reality better.

Grew up a Red Sox fan, watching free games on broadcast TV every week and attending games for less than $10. At one point in the mid-80s bleacher seats were $2.

Left Boston, came back 8 years later, found that you can only watch games on cable and tickets are unbelievably expensive. The Red Sox's new owners want to make a lot of money and hire top talent to make them a winning team. But not all fans can afford to go along for the ride.

Now I have a family. We don't have cable so my son can't watch 95% of games on TV. The one time four of us went to Fenway it was nearly $400 about 15 rows back from the third base line. How can anyone keep that up? He never got a chance to be a fan like I did.

We did play catch and did some batting practice in the park when he was about 8 or 9, but that dropped off as he tried different sports and didn't have the connection with professional baseball. Now, for him, the only sports he watches are football and basketball, and the only sports he plays for fun are basketball, touch football, soccer, and ultimate frisbee.

The game day only sale of bleacher tickets for $2 was a gift from the Baseball Gods to the City of Boston.

Our boys are three sport athletes in high school and it still takes serious bribes to get them to watch any sporting event with me. The one positive note is that they are just as interested in watching women compete as men. I think we have been to an equal number of men's and women's college hockey games, which I am not sure I would have been as open to back in the 70s and 80s.

American Football and baseball are generally different seasons. Does participation in one have any direct effect on the other?

Soccer probably has the best opportunity for growth from the demise of American Football.

Most kids can/do play a single sport year-round. Yes football is primarily in the summer/fall, but there are spring leagues for those kids who want to play. Same thing with baseball. My nephew takes the summer off from little league, mostly because it's hot here and his family takes vacations, but otherwise plays the rest of the year in multiple seasons.

It's not a good idea for a kid to play just one sport. It can lead to injury and burnout. You have pitchers blowing out elbows in high school or even younger because they have played baseball year round since they were 6. Kids should play a variety of seasonal sports and not just one.

It is parents with unrealistic visions of scholarships or professional careers who push young kids to play a single sport year round.

As the coach of a fall little league baseball team, no, it's mostly kids who love baseball and just want to keep playing. A lot of kids also play travel ball tournaments in the summer which could mean about 5 games over a single weekend. But the only position a you could get burnt out on is pitcher. We always keep track of pitch counts and it'd be a serious issue if any coach went over. It's baseball, a kid is not going to get injured because they had too many at bats, or spent too much time standing in center field. It's perfectly safe for a kids to play one sport all season, with the exception of maybe tackle football, but that's a whole other discussion.

There will always be a small number of parents who push their kids too hard and it's up to the leagues and other coaches to step in when it could be dangerous. That said, the vast majority of kids still practicing baseball in the summer and fall are out there because THEY enjoy it and they themselves want to get better at their sport.

> American Football and baseball are generally different seasons. Does participation in one have any direct effect on the other?

I would expect only for those families who choose to have their kid participate in only one sport; football and baseball can both be pretty expensive, equipment and training wise.

Where I grew up in the Midwest United States, football was only available in the late summer and early autumn until you were high-school aged. Baseball could be played from an early age in Spring, Summer, and Fall. There seemed to be more opportunity for skills-focused activities (batting cages for instance) for baseball in the winter than football (at least in central Illinois).

Soccer is available year round and has been since I was a child.

If your parents are focused on your football career, there are all sorts of camps, spring leagues, etc.

My son's little league team lost 4-5 players year to year to youth football (!) and soccer leagues at age 6. It's a big time commitment, although I'm shocked that a parent would allow a child that young to play football at all.

Mostly kids buy gloves and since they are still growing, you need to keep buying gloves that fit.

I played baseball from 6 to 21 with 3 different gloves. I had a 4th backup glove that was my dad's glove from the late 70s (that I used in the early 2000s and was fine). The glove my parents bought the summer before my freshman year of high school is still fine to play catch with my daughter 16 years later. If I take care of it, I don't see any reason it would deteriorate beyond play for at least another 20 years. My current glove isn't special, just a standard Rawlings glove that I've kept oiled.

I played baseball from age 4 (well, T-ball) to age 18 with three gloves. One was a cheap plastic Mizuno that I started with. I graduated to a leather Wilson about two years after that, and then a couple of years later I bought a Nokona. I've been out of the sport for quite some time, but my Nokona is still going strong. It's still the glove I pull out to play catch with from time to time.

Buying a quality glove is worth the investment. The good ones will last forever.

Soccer causes head trauma just as american football does. Be careful :)

In the US, Youth (11 and under) soccer leagues have already banned heading the ball. In those leagues, it's the same as hitting the ball with your hand.

I suspect restrictions on older kids will develop in the coming years as well. I would guess it will always be a part of professional play, but college level and under probably should do away with it.

>In the US, Youth (11 and under) soccer leagues have already banned heading the ball. In those leagues, it's the same as hitting the ball with your hand.

This must be new. I refereed youth soccer around 2003 and this was def. not the case then.

Edit: It looks like this change was made November 2015: http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2015/11/09/22/57/151109-usso...

>I would guess it will always be a part of professional play, but college level and under probably should do away with it.

Wat. I played youth and highschool Soccer and was never injured or saw someone injured by contact with the call when heading ball... (it was always due to mistaken player contact).

Reading this it might be real... Bizarre. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/1...

Not to mention the potential health side-effects of the loose ground rubber fields, which could perhaps be causing cancer among many goalies: http://www.menshealth.com/health/artificial-turf-cancer-risk

I believe the greater risk is head-to-head collisions, when multiple players go for the ball.

As a combat sports fan who follows the issues with brain trauma (chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, being the condition to watch out for): it's gonna be both.

We used to think it was the major concussions that did the long-term damage, and you'd be fine if you avoided the big shots as a boxer (let's say). Modern research shows that the sustained, repeated, sub-concussive blows are genuinely bad for the brain. Training itself can be a major cause of brain damage.

Soccer doesn't focus exclusively on heading the ball, but practicing heading for years, and pushing your limits in games, definitely adds up and has resulted in soccer players with CTE. Major concussive events, like head-to-head collisions, are decidedly no help on top of those training regimes.

My Dad's was also from the late 50s or early 60s, and was still in excellent and very usable condition in the mid-90s, when I unfortunately lost it :-(.

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