When Players Become Collateral Damage

A few weeks ago, I attended a baseball showcase on a night when the weather wasn't great.

The details of the evening are not particularly important. Every coach who has spent enough time around the game has experienced similar situations. Conditions change. Schedules get adjusted. Players wait around longer than expected. Temperatures drop. The environment becomes less than ideal.

Baseball has always been unpredictable that way.

As I stood there watching players go through their evening, I found myself thinking about something that has bothered me for years.

It had nothing to do with the weather, the showcase, or the results themselves.

I found myself thinking about how often players become collateral damage in situations they had absolutely nothing to do with creating.

The longer I coach, the more I realize that some of the biggest challenges in youth baseball have very little to do with baseball itself.

The Game Through A Player's Eyes

One of the reasons I still enjoy coaching is because players often see the game far more clearly than adults do.

Most players are not thinking about politics, organizational relationships, or disagreements between adults. They want opportunities. They want to improve. They want to compete. They want to play baseball.

The game is actually quite simple from their perspective.

Unfortunately, youth baseball is still run by adults, and adults bring experiences, opinions, relationships and biases into every environment they enter. Most of the time those things stay in the background. Sometimes they don't.

Over the years, I have watched talented players find themselves caught in situations they never created. Issues between adults, organizational politics, and outside opinions have a way of finding their way onto the field even when the players themselves had nothing to do with them.

And that is where problems begin.

Because once adults lose sight of the player, the game starts moving in the wrong direction.

Standing at that showcase, I found myself wondering how many opinions would be formed before the night was even over.

Some players would perform well. Some wouldn't. Some would be dealing with circumstances nobody else knew about.

Yet by the end of the evening, conclusions would inevitably be drawn.

That has always been one of the dangers of baseball evaluation. People often become convinced they have the complete picture after seeing only a small part of the story.

Baseball Is A Long-Term Game

I have never believed in defining players by isolated moments.

A showcase can provide information.

A game can provide information.

A workout can provide information.

But none of those things tell the complete story by themselves.

Baseball is a long-term game.

The best evaluations come from patterns, not moments.

I have coached players who looked ordinary during a workout and later represented Ontario, played college baseball, or developed into completely different athletes a few years later. I have also seen players dominate a workout or showcase only to plateau because their development stopped there.

That is why I have always believed that evaluations should be based on the complete picture rather than isolated snapshots.

When Adult Issues Become Player Issues

One of the questions I find myself asking more frequently as I get older is a simple one.

Who is actually being affected by the decisions adults are making?

Because far too often, the answer is the players.

Players do not control organizational relationships.

Players do not control disagreements between adults.

Players do not control perceptions, assumptions or history.

Yet they are often the ones who feel the consequences.

I have seen opportunities become more complicated than they needed to be. I have seen adults become so focused on being right that they stopped focusing on what was right for the players involved. I have seen situations where development, opportunity and fairness took a back seat to issues that had nothing to do with baseball.

This is not unique to one team, one organization or one event.

It exists throughout youth sports.

The details may change from situation to situation, but the outcome is often the same.

Players become collateral damage in conflicts they never joined.

The Bigger Picture

As I drove home that night, I kept coming back to the same thought.

The players did everything that was asked of them. They showed up, competed, adapted to the circumstances, and did their best with the opportunities they were given.

Yet when the night was over, I found myself wondering how many opportunities, evaluations, and perceptions are shaped by circumstances players never had any control over.

I have become less interested in being right and more interested in making sure players have a fair opportunity to show who they are. Maybe that's because I've been around the game long enough to understand how difficult development really is.

Players are going to struggle. They are going to fail. They are going to have bad games, bad tournaments, and bad showcases. That's baseball.

The danger comes when adults start treating those moments as complete definitions instead of small pieces of a much larger story.

That is why I believe adults need to be careful. Every comment, every evaluation and every conclusion carries weight when young athletes are involved. Players are still growing physically. They are still growing emotionally. They are still trying to figure out who they are as athletes and as people.

The last thing they need is to have opportunities, evaluations, and futures influenced by factors that have nothing to do with their ability, effort, or potential.

I'm less interested in the politics that occasionally surround the game and the more interested I become in protecting the players inside it.

Because players don't choose the politics.

Players don't choose the rivalries.

Players don't choose the history between adults.

Most of them simply want an opportunity to improve, compete, and show who they are.

Sometimes the best thing adults can do is get out of the way and let them have that chance.

Because in the end, youth baseball is supposed to be about the players.

Not the politics.

Not the disagreements.

Not the agendas.

The players.

And the moment we lose sight of that, we lose sight of what the game is supposed to be about.