Blue Sox Travel Baseball

“Our family spent the spring season with this organization.  There are a few things to like:  the facilities are pretty good, the organization level is good, and the value for the amount of baseball played is decent considering other clubs in the area tend to be more expensive.  However, I would thoroughly vet the coach for your team and age group, plus ask hard questions about the ownership of Talkin' Baseball before you commit.  Our experience was poor mainly due to the head coach.  The main assistant coach on our team was wonderful and I'd coach with him anytime, but the head coach is not fit to coach young children.  He should coach teenagers at the youngest, and probably shouldn't coach baseball at all given how poorly he manages a team from a baseball sense.  (General organization of the team was fine, baseball was done poorly). Not only was there daddyball in full effect on our team, but if a player expressed emotion at 8 years old, he wanted none of it.  He severely punished players for their emotions, claiming that the "player conduct agreement" was violated, and even gave him grounds to dismiss the player from the team, claiming that the image of the organization is tarnished by bad behavior.  Even if those things were acceptable, the way he tore down a young child with demeaning and humiliating comments in front of the entire team and any adult within earshot was completely out of line.  If an 8-year-boy acts poorly and is out of line, the last thing a grown man (and head coach of a team) should do is demean, belittle, and humiliate. This approach became especially hypocritical when reading through the detail of the conduct agreement, which states that no cursing or insulting of the umpires or other players will be tolerated.  The head coach's wife and her father repeatedly chirped the umpires during our games, and even yelled out at the opposing pitcher to "throw the d@mn ball" when a young child was simply taking his time on the mound - an action that was immediately addressed by the umpire who stopped the game.  Interestingly enough, another player gets punished and humiliated in public for directing negative emotions at himself, but when the head coach's own family directs negative behavior towards others, that seems completely fine.  My son reported after multiple practices that "Coach ____ says bad words", which directly violates the "no cursing" statute in the agreement.  I tend to believe the child in this case because the head coach cursed in front of me more than once, so I have to believe he was doing it in front of 8-yr-old boys. Repeated attempts to contact the owner about these problems were completely ignored on multiple fronts - email, social media, etc.  I'm sure the owner of TB would like to know that one of his head coaches repeatedly violates his conduct agreement and has the emotional maturity and empathy level of a caveman, but apparently he does not want to know. In my observation, TB has some great coaches on other teams, and the org does offer some upside, so I can't fault the entire org for one terrible head coach and an unresponsive owner, but these things should give you pause when considering their teams.”

“15U team was daddy ball and a waste of $3,000. ”

“Development basically plateaus at 12U. ”