By Nathan Rode
National Supervisor

If you’re a parent, let me share this quick story with you: A travel team hosted a tournament in my area recently and I went to one of the games to see a couple players I had been told about. Also at the game were three coaches—a low-level Division I, a Division II and junior college. One of the teams in the game I went to see didn’t show up, so a team from the previous game stuck around so the team that did show could play. But the charitable team was short players so a coach filled in in right field while two left-handed throwers played infield positions, other than first base. It was nice that the team stuck around so I can’t blame them for having a quirky defense and the tournament organizers can only do so much about a team showing up. But because the game was thrown together, the energy level bottomed out and I—as well as at least one coach—left after a few innings because we weren’t getting anything out of it. The entry fee (per team) was pretty standard from what I’ve seen. If I were a parent, I would be disappointed in the product. I’m not going to throw any programs under the bus based on one game of one tournament, but it made me want to reiterate that when signing your child up for travel ball, please do your homework and make sure you’re getting what you want out of it.

That’s all I have to say about that. Let’s get to some questions from this week…

What does it mean when a scout is at your game and specifically films you while you are pitching?
Video has become a big part of scouting recently. You won't often see an area scout without a handheld video camera. There are multiple reasons for this. First, teams can collect the video from their scouts so more can see a player if they can't see him in person. Second, it's handy for scouts to be able to go back and look at players after they've seen them in person. It's simply another tool to do the job. If a scout takes video of you at a game, then he has enough interest to want to have that video on file to view again later or show others in his organization.