But is it all good?
By: Bob Nuse
It’s here.
All-Star season. The month of the year where they have an all-star games in baseball and softball starting with 8-year-olds and going up through the 15-year-old Babe Ruth championships.
There are Little League District tournaments in baseball and softball for 12-year-olds and 10-year-olds. There are tournaments for 11-year-olds, 9-year-olds and, believe it or not, 8-year-old all-star teams. That’s right, by the time your kid is 8, it’s been determined whether or not he or she is good enough to be an all-star.
And if you’re kid isn’t an all-star when they’re 8, chances are they may never be an all-star. That’s because every coach you talk to at every age level about the 8-year-old level will inevitably tell you how their team has been together "since these kids were 8."
That means if when your kid was 8 years old he or she was more interested in bugs or playing on the swingset than they were in playing baseball five, six or seven days a week for a month, they’re out of luck. So much for the late bloomers.
And that’s with the all-star teams starting at the ripe old age of 8 years old. It’s just a matter of time until the 6- and 7-year-olds want to get into the tournament act as well. In fact, we shouldn’t have to wait much longer until there are district tournaments for T-ball.
But we don’t make the rules and decide on the rosters, we just cover the teams. And if it’s July, then there are certainly plenty of teams to cover.
Here in our little neck of the woods know as the Packet-area, we have all-star teams from Montgomery, Princeton, West Windsor, Cranbury-Plainsboro, Princeton-Cranbury and West Windsor-Plainsboro. There are softball teams and baseball teams in at least seven different age groups.
Needless to say, even with the help of some of our sister papers in the Packet chain, we can’t be everywhere. So what we do is cover the District 12 Little League tournaments for 12-year-olds in baseball and softball as best we can. Sometimes that’s tough because we don’t even find out some of the teams are playing until they’re already finished. But we give it our best shot.
We’ll try our best to get to the 13-year-old and 15-year-old Babe Ruth district tournaments as well, but since all of these events take place at relatively the same time, we can’t always be there.
If you happen to be associated with a team that plays in the non-district events, we’ll be happy to include your scores in the newpaper. But you’ll need to provide us with the information, which can be done by fax (924-3842) or e-mail (either [email protected] or [email protected]).
Hopefully this will be another July of successful runs through the tournaments for our locals. It seems like every summer there are at least a few teams that do something special. We’ll do the best we can to be there to record it.
If your team is doing something special, let us know and we’ll do what we can to let others know.
Best of luck.