Regular Season Tryouts Are This Weekend

Players signed up for the American League, National League or Major League at Myers Park Trinity must come to a skills assessment tryout this weekend at Randolph Park. All players will be drafted into one of those divisions based on their skill level and age as of April 30th.

Tryouts normally include baserunning, batting, fielding drills and pitching in the older divisions. Players should dress appropriately and bring the necessary equipment - glove, hat, cleats, etc. - if possible.

The schedule for tryouts is below. Please arrive early to sign in and get a tryout number prior to hitting the field. If your child must miss his scheduled tryout time that was chosen at registration, come to one of the other times for the same age group. If he or she must be absent all weekend, there is a make-up tryout session on Monday at 5:30. But rain is in the forecast for that day, so come this weekend if you can.

Please note that players cannot be drafted by a Major League team without attending tryouts. T-Ball players, Softball players, and returning Major League players that have previously been drafted do not need to tryout.

Saturday, February 26th - 3:30 p.m. - 6 year olds Sunday, February 27th - 3:30 p.m. - 6 year olds Saturday, February 26th - 9:00 a.m. - 7 year olds Saturday, February 26th - 12:30 p.m. - 7 year olds Sunday, February 27th - 12:30 p.m. - 7 year olds Saturday, February 26th - 10:30 a.m. - 8 year olds Saturday, February 26th - 2:00 p.m. - 8 year olds Sunday, February 27th - 2:00 p.m. - 8 year olds Saturday, February 26th - 9:00 a.m. - 9 year olds

Saturday February 26th - 3:30 p.m. - 9 year olds

Sunday February 27th - 12:30 p.m. - 9 year olds

Saturday, February 26th - 10:30 a.m. - 10 year olds

Saturday February 26th - 2:00 p.m. - 10 year olds

Sunday February 27th - 2:00 p.m. - 10 year olds

Saturday, February 26th - 12:30 p.m. - 11 year olds

Sunday, February 27th - 3:30 p.m. - 11 year olds

Saturday, February 26th 12:30 p.m. - 12 year olds

Sunday, February 27th - 3:30 p.m. - 12 year olds

Big Things Come in Small Packages

In baseball, sometimes it's not size that matters.  More important is quality instruction, hard work and determination. Here's a good story from MLB.com on the promising career of 5'7" Kansas City Royals pitcher, Tim Collins.

Baseball For All at Spring Training

Justine Siegal of Baseball For All continues to spread her message that girls can play baseball too. This week at Cleveland Indians spring training, she became the first woman to throw batting practice for a Major League team. Pretty cool.

MPTLL History Project: 1952

As previously mentioned, Little League first came to Charlotte in 1951. Our own Myers Park Civitan League was chartered with Little League Baseball in March of 1952. Play began in June of that year.

The 1952 season included four original major league teams: Harry & Bryant Co., Al Browne's Service, Blythe Motors and Farmers Dairy. Although Philip Der Yuen was listed on the charter as President of the league, with Robert Brooks as Vice President and Harold Richardson as Secretary/Treasurer, it has been said that Jack Starnes was considered "head of the Little League group" for the Civitans and therefore our first league President. Jack was closely involved throughout the 1950's in a variety of ways: umpiring games, travelling to all-star tournaments, helping build Ranson Field (later named EC Griffith) on Randolph Road, etc.

During that first season, games were played on the Myers Park Elementary School playground among the four teams. Legend has it that Clayton Bundy of Farmers Dairy hit the first homerun in league history on Opening Day 1952. His team would go on to win the championship that year, thanks in part to Bundy's bat and the pitching of guys like Ray Farris.

As was usual throughout the '50's and '60's, there were several newspaper clippings about the games. This first set includes a picture of what is possibly the first game ever played between now old rivals Al Browne's and Harry & Bryant. It was a part of this Observer spread about the rise of Little League in Charlotte. Hope you enjoy.

More Composite Bats Get LL Waivers

Little League has granted several more waivers under its composite bat moratorium at the Majors Division and below:  a couple of DeMarini CF4's and some of last year's Easton Stealth models. The Stealths are surprising to me, as they are quality bats and I had figured the older model composites would be too "hot" to pass Little League testing. Here is the updated list of waivers.

New T-Ball Field is Shaping Up

The fences are up at T-Ball Field #3. Here's the progression so far.

Final Days of Spring Registration Are Here

Online registration for spring baseball and softball ends this Sunday, February 20th. Make sure to visit the league website and sign up before then. It would help the league if everyone handled it as soon as possible, in order to minimize the last minute paperwork prior to tryouts.

Tryouts for the American League (machine pitch), National League and Major League are next weekend, February 26-27. T-Ball, Softball and Returning Major League players do not need to tryout. But they must register to play.

If you need any dates for the upcoming season, remember there is a league calendar on the website.

Study Concludes Youth Sports Don't Interfere With Family Time

A study has been conducted at the University of Minnesota by the Minnesota Youth Sport Research Consortium to determine how much family time youth sports activities take up.

The results have been published amidst several media reports about those who say that organized youth sports take away too much from valuable family time and kids' creative, unstructured activities. The movement against over-scheduling kids has taken off in recent years as a response to a general trend of longer seasons and kids playing multiple sports at the same time.

But interestingly, the conclusions of the Minnesota study indicate otherwise. Parents who were polled did not seem to think their sports activities were taking up much time normally spent on homework, sleep, family dinners, etc.

Every town, league and family is different. Some families just eat, sleep and breathe baseball (or whatever sport they are playing). Some may feel that youth sports has created more family time, since they have an activity they all enjoy together. To others it is a burden and creates less family time.

One thing is for sure. We all make our own decisions about our amount of involvement in youth sports, based on what works for our own families. I think that's the reason behind the conclusions of this study. As long as you're making your own decisions, you can't really complain about it.

Another Study on Youth Pitching

The results of a 10-year study on youth pitching have been published by The American Journal of Sports Medicine. This one, which began in 1999 before pitch counts were the norm in youth baseball, used innings pitched as the primary risk factor to be measured. The study also looked at pitchers who played the position of catcher and those who threw curveballs before the age of 13.

The study found that youth pitchers throwing more than 100 innings per calendar year were 3.5 times more likely to experience a serious arm injury. It found a small increase in injuries for those pitchers also playing catcher. But it was unable to find a correlation between curveballs and injuries.

The details of this study, as well as a good summary on youth pitching and previous research on the subject, are in the AJSM publication. This is not exactly new information - we know quite a lot more about overuse injuries than we did in 1999. But it is further confirmation and another reminder of how careful we need to be about the number of pitches our boys throw, how fatigued they get when pitching, and how much rest they get between outings. Taking these precautions, which are mostly mandated by Little League rules, and teaching proper mechanics will go a long way toward keeping our pitchers safe.

Walk-Up Registration Update

Slight change of plans for the walk-up registration in Grier Heights:  There will no longer be sign-ups on Monday, Wednesday or Friday - just Tuesday 3:00-5:00, Thursday 3:00-5:00, Saturday 10:00-4:00 and Sunday 1:00-5:00. The location is in front of Grier Heights Community Monumental Park on Sam Drenan Road just off Randolph. Volunteers are especially needed for Saturday and Sunday. Lauro would like to put an additional crew at the Food Lion on Wendover. Let me know if you can help.