What Ever Happened to Hard Work?

Why would anyone want to spend thousands of hours teaching other people's kids how to play baseball? Good question, but one evidently oblivious to some parents of youth baseball players.

I personally enjoy this time with my own boys, and with the other boys on their teams. However, from time to time, you will have to endure an email or phone call from a parent explaining how busy their life is dropping and picking up their player from practices, or how difficult it is for Joey to bat in the lower half of the lineup.

(If more people understood how a batting lineup is supposed to work, it would all make sense.)

Parents want their kids to play a high level of select baseball, yet they many times do not encourage the player to work on his own to make it happen. Select baseball, like any travel-level sport, requires skills taught in practice by an instructor/coach. But those skills must be honed by the player on the player's own time. Whether it is the player's dad/mom helping him with the drills or encouraging him to work on his game, or time spent with a private instructor; it doesn't matter.

The point is, a player cannot expect to attend two or three team practices a week and make significant personal progress -- he must work on his own. Team practices make the team alot better; personal workouts make the individual player alot better.

It seems there is a level of entitlement (from which some, but not all, suffer) leaving some parents and players thinking, "If I want it, I should get it."

What ever happened to hard work?