Baseball had a grass-roots start in America. By the mid-1800s, it was widely referred to as the national pastime.

The pages of our newspaper in the late 1800s carried accounts of “nines” fielded by local towns and villages facing off against one another with crowds of onlookers cheering them on.

One account, from exactly a century ago, told of a Saturday game in Preston Hollow where the second baseman, Ferris Hagadorn, was hit with a pitched ball, breaking a bone near his wrist.

“After running to first base he was relieved of further play and Dr. Sholtes, who was at the game, reduced the fracture,” The Enterprise reported on Aug. 7, 1925.

The doctor returned to being a spectator and Hagadorn remained at the game.

These players presumably had a love of the game and all that entails.

We felt that same love of the game last week as we talked to coaches, parents, and grandparents about two local youth teams who qualified for the Cal Ripken World Series.

As you read this, 14 Guilderland 12-year-olds are playing their hearts out in Brandon, Missouri and 13 Bethlehem 10-year-olds are doing the same in Vincennes, Indiana.

A photo taken by Abbie Irons when the Tri-Village team from Bethlehem became state champions showed Coach Bryan Yusko, his arms outstretched to hug his players who gathered around him in a mass huddle.

“They have the best coaches in the entire world,” said Patty Kebea, the mother of one of the players, Lucas. “They volunteer their time. They don’t get paid for this,” she went on. “And they put in the work with our kids and they love our kids, like they’re their own. … We really are like a family, which is really cool.”

Yusko said the coaches let the kids set their own goals. They met their goal for this year — getting to the World Series.

But it’s about more than just the game, said Yusko. “It’s about teaching them life, too …. Lessons like you have to work hard to accomplish things. You set goals and you work to achieve them.”

The Guilderland parents, and grandparents, too, also feel like part of something larger than themselves.

“Every parent contributes,” said Coach Sean Davidson. “Everyone is all in, whether it’s helping run a tournament at Keenholts, helping run practices, doing fields, or fundraising … This is a true team effort,” he said.

Getting to the World Series has been a goal for generations for the Guilderland team. Two of the coaches had played together in their youth on a team that didn’t make it and are thrilled their sons have.

A grandmother of twins on the team, Mason and Jacob Vanderwarker, said that Mason had been in his brother’s shadow. On the Guilderland team, she said, “They gave him a chance and he just came into his own. He just needed somebody to believe in him.” 

In the qualifying game for the World Series, Mason hit the home run that brought in three players, including his brother. “Jacob was so proud of him,” said their grandmother. “It was just so wonderful to see him shine.”

While we were thrilled to report on the good that comes with these volunteer efforts to shape not just winning players but confident, capable, and caring human beings, we also looked at the larger picture — beyond Bethlehem and Guilderland — and found some troubling trends.

Baseball for youth, like many sports, is increasingly being privatized for profit.

Yusko explained to us that his Tri-Village team, like many teams in the area, switched from Little League to Cal Ripken.

Cal Ripken increases the field size as players age and is better for players “melding into our travel program,” Yusko said.

“A lot of teams in our area have switched over to Cal Ripken so there’s really not much to Little League anymore,” he said. The team of 10-year-olds that recently won the state Little League championship, Yusko said, did not face much competition.

The Ripken Baseball brand is owned by Josh Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, and David Blitzer, a senior executive at Blackstone, and is part of their Unrivaled Sports youth sports portfolio.

Harris and Blitzer own the Philadelphia 76ers, the New Jersey Devils, and the Washington Commanders.

They also own the baseball camp in Cooperstown, New York and the Ripken Experience in Aberdeen, Maryland, both of which the Guilderland team has attended.

The Ripken Experience, its website says, is focused on “treating our ballplayers like Big Leaguers. Walk-up music, player announcements, and our replica fields will have you feel like you’re playing in the Major League.”

Teams pay several thousand dollars each to enter four-day tournaments there, featuring teams from around the country. The players’ families pay for lodging and excursions.

Baseball is not alone in being monetized for kids. Youth sports in the United States is a $40 billion business. About 60 million children play sports, and the average U.S. sports family spent $1,016 on its child’s primary sport in 2024, a 46 percent increase since 2019, according to the Aspen Institute’s latest parent survey in partnership with Utah State University and Louisiana Tech University.

“That’s a far cry,” notes The New York Times, “from the days when youth sports were dominated by locally run offshoots of nonprofit organizations like the Catholic Youth Organization, Pop Warner and Little League Baseball.”

“The private baseball and softball business model relies on scaling up to as many teams as possible,” writes John W. Miller, who coached a private baseball club, typically called a travel team. “If you can get 20 teams of 12 players each paying $2,500 a season, that is $600,000 in revenue,” he notes in “How America Sold Out Little League Baseball.”

Private lessons, which cost up to $150 an hour, are another source of revenue, Miller writes.

“Parents are told these are needed year-round if their child is to play in college … The intense specialization pushed by many parents is a danger to children,” he opines and goes on, “There is so much money in private youth sports companies that former Major League professionals are now investing in clubs instead of looking for jobs in professional baseball. In 2001, Hall of Famer Cal Ripken led the way by founding Ripken Baseball, which organizes pay-to-play tournaments all over the country.”

ProPublica reports, based on 2023 tax filings, that Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation Inc. has $26.1 million in total assets and $5.69 million in total liabilities.

The Project Play report points up another troubling trend: It cites the annual survey by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association in 2021 that found that 24 percent of kids ages 6 to 12 from homes with $25,000 or less played sports on a regular basis, compared to 40 percent of kids from households with an income of $100,000 or more.

Researchers at Ohio State and Oregon State took a deep look at this trend, on the high school and college level, reported on by the Ohio State News. “We often think about sports as level playing fields that reward people who earn their success, but that’s not the whole story,” said Chris Knoester, co-author of the studies and a professor at Ohio State. “Success depends a lot on the advantages young people have when they grow up.”

While 70 percent of students from families with high socioeconomic status played a high school sport, and 27 percent of them were team captains, only 43 percent of those from families of low socioeconomic status played and only 8 percent were captains.

Wealthy parents can pay for more sports for their kids, pay for specialized training and club sports outside of school, and live in neighborhoods with better fields and courts and other resources.

But another, more subtle, advantage is what the researchers called the “intensive parenting” that goes on in families with high socioeconomic status.

It starts at the very beginning, said Kristen Hextrum, an assistant professor at Oregon State and lead author of the research, with parents introducing their young children to sports, and to specific sports.  Hextrum said nearly every athlete in her study said their parents initiated their entry into sports.

“When you intensively parent, you have more resources to invest in your child’s athletic future, and that’s not just money. It is time, emotional investment and educational investment,” Hextrum said.

Of course, every parent wants what is best for their children and we salute the parents that have the means to support their children.

But the lack of meritocracy in sports does not bode well for the future of our nation as the divide between the haves and the have-nots grows ever wider and deeper. Success in sports these days is often the means to a college scholarship and a bright future.

Should baseball, or any other sport, be just for suburban kids with good support?

The State of Play survey found that half of respondents who played youth sports or who have children who have played have struggled to afford the costs to participate. Blacks and Hispanics struggled more than whites. The lower the household income, the greater the struggle to pay for youth sports.

To solve this dilemma, we found a glimmer of hope in a survey conducted by the Commission on the State of the United States Olympics and Paralympics. Eighty-one percent agreed that “sports are an important institution in the United States,” and even among those least likely to agree — women, Latinos, and those in the northeastern United States — roughly three-quarters still agreed.

Our federal government itself has outlined the importance of youth sports. “The benefits for youth who engage in regular physical activity are clear: they have improved bone health, weight status, cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, cardiometabolic health, and cognitive function and a reduced risk of depression,” says the National Youth Sports Strategy report from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health.

The report, issued during President Donald Trump’s first term, goes on, “Playing sports can provide additional benefts, including developing competence, confidence, and self-esteem; reducing risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts and tendencies; and improving life skills, such as goal setting, time management, and work ethic.”

However, the government report notes, “With all of these benefits, it is striking that only 20 percent of adolescents meet the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (getting at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each day)” and sets a goal of increasing youth-sports participation to 63 percent by 2030.

The commission’s survey found that 69 percent support this goal of increasing youth-sports participation and 52 percent say public funding of sports would have the most impact at the level of youth and school sports. This is far more support than for public funding of college sports (6 percent) or professional leagues (5 percent) or even Olympic sports (14 percent).

We support our state’s initiatives through the Office of Children and Family Services, which provides funding to municipal youth bureaus, who then distribute it to local organizations for youth sports programs. And we commend Albany County for its partnership with the Amateur Athletic Union that offers low-cost sports programs to families who might otherwise not afford it.

We also commend the towns we cover that provide parks and playing fields — like Guilderland’s Keenholts Park where the 12-year-olds won the game on July 21 that qualified them for the World Series — open to all.

However, we need to do more, each of us, in garnering support that will level the playing field as it were, so more kids will have a chance to experience the same kinds of challenges and joys as the Guilderland and Tri-Village players.

Every team cannot rise to the top as these two teams have through the support of their coaches and families and communities and through their own individual and committed efforts.

But every kid should have that chance.