Youth Baseball

Youth baseball has been around since the beginning of baseball in the United States. Kids wanting to be like the stars, having the dream of one day being able to play in the Major League. In 1939 Carl Stotz founded the first youth baseball league called Little league in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It is a non-profit organization in the United States which organizes local children’s leagues of baseball and softball throughout the USA and the rest of the world. It started with three teams back in 1939 but expanded to several 100,000 teams today. There is even a Little league museum in Williamsburg with history and facts about Little League, as well as youth baseball photos. The different leagues have their own youth baseball games and youth baseball tournaments as well as a Little League World Series. The Little league World Series is hosted in South Williamsport. Little leagues idea was to offer a wholesome sports program as a way to teach ideals such as sportsmanship, fair play and teamwork. Today the goals are similar to those in 1939 teach children to grow up to be good citizens by learning these values on the field.

The idea originally was to organize games and standardize rules in youth baseball and have a healthy competitive sportsmanlike interaction with other players and teams. Kids and parents should be able to afford it and be able to play baseball. In most cities there is free youth baseball training or just for small fees baseball training available. Since youth baseball gear is fairly expensive fundraising and financial support, mostly from local businesses helps to buy baseball gear for the youth and youth baseball equipment.

Youth baseball teams need similar gear as most minor or major league teams, anything from baseball bats over uniforms to socks. Two well-known youth baseball bat manufacturers are Demarini youth baseball bats and Rawlings youth baseball bats. Youth baseball bats have caused lots of discussions and decisions whether they should be made out of wood or metal. Wood is harder to play with and will result in less homeruns than metal bats.

Several other organizations also started to exist to organize baseball in different regions and states; some of them are associated with the Little League baseball association. To mention a few, there is the Hay youth baseball association, MYBA or also called Moore Youth baseball association located in Moore, Oklahoma, the BYB or also called Batavia baseball association for Batavia and Mooseheart in Illinois, the Simi Youth baseball association in California and finally the Belton youth baseball association in Belton, Texas, also called the BYBA.