Nobody Is Even There
The youth sports economy keeps selling exposure while kids quietly lose summers they'll never get back.
“It’ll never be, but just imagine the money was taken out of it for a minute..
You think you’re voluntarily taking your 12u kid up to ‘X Showcase’ to showcase skills to coaches (who aint even there).
Or is he doing back flips off the diving board & eating pizza with friends?”
-Ray Zingler on X
It’s Saturday.
You got into the hotel late last night.
You wake your kid up at the ass crack of dawn and shove a shitty hotel breakfast down his throat before arriving at the ball field and unfolding your chair behind the chain-link fence.
Your kid heads off to congregate with the other pre-teens like they’re stock at sale barn, getting ready to “show their stuff” to a bunch of rando’s with twitter accounts that mean fuck all nothing, whom you’ve just paid well over a grand (all costs considered) to, to say nice things about your kid in their “write up”.
You’re soaking it in, showcase banners draped over fences, no actual coaches anywhere in sight, and dads shouting cues from behind the pen..
But your phone’s out ready to film!
Meanwhile, another kid is just waking up on a trampoline with his buddies after a late-night sleepover where they spent all night doing back flips off diving boards, eating shitty chain restaurant pizza, laughing with their buddies, having an actual childhood.
Which kid is more alive?
The kid living freely without a care in the world?
Or the kid whose being lied to about “opportunity” which is actually just unnecessary anxiety framed as “development”.
But most of these (highly irrational) people just can’t help themselves.
The matrix has them chained to fear.
Fear of their kid falling behind.
Fear of another kid “getting ahead”.
Fear of being labeled “rec ball people” in travel ball culture.
You realize these fuckers who put this circus on THRIVE on your parental insecurity?
If every event is “can’t miss”, you realize, none of them are??
Call me old school, but if my kids “don’t make it” focusing on the joy of sports & activities, unstructured play, and friendships, all while developing real world, life skills beyond sports..
Did they really “not make it”?
What the fuck is “it”?
A partial scholarship you pay 10x for, chasing, all for your kid to be pushed to the side for a portal kid?
One day our kids aren’t going to remember their exit velo from a June showcase, but they will remember their summers and whether they actually got to have one.