Travel baseball went from a proving ground for high school players to a $28 billion business in 25 years. Coach watched the whole ride from the dugout.

From Coach

Travel ball used to mean something different.

When my son was coming up through Little League, about 25 years ago, travel ball was not the whole world. It was for the older kids. High school age, mostly. The ones with a real path to college who needed tougher competition than the local league could give them. Everybody else was still developing. Learning the game. Getting reps. The grind was individual. You worked on your swing, your arm, your feet, and travel was the reward at the end of the road, not the road itself.

Then it crept younger.

I watched it happen. First it showed up around the private schools as a feeder into their high school programs. It was sold as development. A lot of it was really about filling rosters. Then the schools and the academies figured out something. There was money in this. A travel program could pay the assistant coaches, and pretty soon it could pay a whole lot more than that. So more teams got created. More tournaments. More entry fees. And here we are.

I looked into the numbers to make sure I was not just talking like an old coach. I was not.

Look at what 25 years did

Go back to when my son was in Little League. That was the top of the mountain. Little League had close to 3 million kids in it, right around its all-time peak. The World Series was so popular they doubled the field from 8 teams to 16 in 2001. And travel ball, the way we know it today, barely existed. Perfect Game was only a few years old and small. Cal Ripken had just started his pay-to-play tournament company in 2001. That was the seed of the whole thing.

Now flip it around.

Little League has shrunk almost every year since, dropping 1.5 to 3 percent a year for 25 straight years. The travel machine that hardly existed back then is now a business worth around 28 billion dollars. Perfect Game alone runs events in 42 states for more than 1.5 million kids and pulls in over 100 million dollars a year. Team fees run 1,000 to 3,000 dollars a season, and that is before hotels, gas, and the 2,000 dollar tournament entries. Some club owners clear 200,000 dollars a year running what is really just youth baseball.

Same 25 years. The local league emptied out, and the business filled up.

This is the part that bothers me.

The focus moved. It used to be about the individual grind, and travel was proof you had put in the work. Now, for a lot of families, travel is the work. Play more games. Join another team. Chase another showcase. But games are not development. You do not get better in a Sunday bracket. You get better on the days nobody is watching, and then you go show it. Somewhere along the way we flipped that around.

The arms are paying for it

There is a cost nobody puts on the tournament invoice. Dr. James Andrews, the most respected arm surgeon in the game, saw a seven-fold jump in young pitchers needing Tommy John surgery over about a decade. In 1996, only 3 percent of the elbow reconstructions he did were on high school pitchers. By 2008 it was 32 percent. He went from doing one or two of those a year on kids to dozens. His number one cause was year-round baseball. Not just throwing all year. Competing all year, with no time to recover.

What stings is that a lot of these are not lazy kids. Plenty of them kept their own grind going, the lessons and the cage work, and then stacked a full travel and tournament schedule on top of it. More is not always better. An arm cannot tell the difference between good work and too much work. It adds it all up, and eventually it breaks.

Some teams are just filling a roster

Not every travel team is chasing anything. A club will run an A team, a B team, a C team, sometimes more. The top team might be legit. The ones under it are often there to fill rosters and bring in fees, and that registration money pads the budget. That is the business. Then parents get told, one way or another, that if their kid is not on a travel team by 11 or 12 they are already behind. So they pay, because they are scared not to. Most of those kids are not on a college path. That is not an insult, it is just the math. The machine needs bodies, and fear fills the roster.

Why it keeps growing

The scouts love it, and that is a big reason it is not slowing down. Look at it from their side. A college recruiter used to drive field to field, town to town, to watch one kid at a time. Now he walks into one complex with a dozen fields and a couple hundred teams, and the 16u and 17u talent is all sitting right there. The big wood bat tournaments in Jupiter and Marietta pull 700 to 800 scouts and recruiters into one place. It saves them time and money, and they see more players in a weekend than they used to see in a month. So the events keep getting bigger, because the people who hand out the scholarships keep showing up. That part is real, and if your kid has the talent and the record to back it up, that exposure is worth something.

Softball is its own animal

Girls' travel softball took the same road, but the recruiting side works differently, and parents need to know this.

Softball recruiting moves earlier. A lot of it happens before a girl even reaches her junior year, and D1 coaches can start real contact September 1 of junior year. In baseball, D1 coaches cannot even respond to a recruit until August 1 of junior year. So the softball clock feels faster, and the pressure to be on the "right" travel team early hits families harder.

The scholarship math is different too. Softball has historically been funded better per roster than baseball. But the truth is almost nobody gets a full ride. Most offers are partial, somewhere between 10 and 60 percent, and the biggest money goes to pitchers. If your daughter pitches, and pitches well, she is one of the most valuable players on that field. Baseball just changed its own math with bigger rosters, but the same rule holds. Pitching gets paid.

Same game underneath. Different roads to the same college field.

Coach's gear picks

You cannot manage what you do not measure. A few things families keep asking me about:

But a gun only tells you so much. It gives you a number today. It does not tell you if you are getting better. That is the whole reason I built MyGrind. Log the exit velo, log the reps, and watch the trend over weeks. The gear measures one swing. The journal shows the work.

See all of Coach's picks →

Back to the grind

I am not against travel ball. My son played it, and it opened real doors for him. Just do not let the tournament become the whole point. The kid who logs the work, tracks the reps, and shows up when nobody is clapping is the one still standing when it counts.

That is what MyGrind is for. Baseball or softball, one place for the whole grind. We are running 30 days free to start.

Log it. Own it.

Coach
@mygrindapp

Common questions about travel ball

When did travel baseball take over youth sports?
Mostly in the last 25 years. Around 2000, Little League was near its all-time peak of nearly 3 million players and travel ball barely existed. Since then Little League has fallen 1.5 to 3 percent a year, while for-profit youth sports has grown into a roughly $28 billion business.

Is travel baseball worth it?
It depends on the player. For a talented, college-bound athlete, big showcase tournaments offer real exposure, which is why 700 to 800 scouts show up to events like the Jupiter wood-bat championship. For most players it is expensive and not a college path, and the bigger risk is overuse. Development still happens in individual work, not in playing more games.

Why have youth baseball arm injuries increased?
Year-round throwing and competing with no recovery time. Dr. James Andrews reported a seven-fold rise in young pitchers needing Tommy John surgery over about a decade, and high schoolers went from 3 percent of his elbow reconstructions in 1996 to 32 percent by 2008. Pitch-count and rest guidelines exist to prevent this.

How is travel softball recruiting different from baseball?
Softball recruiting runs earlier. D1 softball coaches can begin contact September 1 of a player's junior year, and much of the interest builds before that. In baseball, D1 coaches cannot respond to a recruit until August 1 of junior year. Most softball scholarships are partial, and pitchers receive the largest offers.

At what age do college coaches start watching players?
The 16U and 17U level is where scouting concentrates. Recruiters favor large tournaments because they can watch hundreds of teams at one complex instead of driving field to field.

How can a young player protect their development in travel ball?
Track the work and the rest, not just the game count. Log throwing volume, workouts, and recovery days so overuse shows up before an injury does. A logged record also gives college coaches proof of the work.