By Bill Ripken

Hosting tournaments is a big part of what we do at Ripken Baseball, so I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the topic. There are a lot of travel teams out there - travel, metro, tournament and all kinds of hybrids. But true travel teams should be made up of players who are committed to travelling and playing a more intense schedule.

Even with the popularity of travel teams, there's still a presence for in-house or recreational leagues. My oldest boy is 10, and he decided to try baseball for the first time. Rec. ball was the right choice.

In playing the rec. season, he got some hits, threw some strikes, made a few plays and had an overall good time on the field. The team played just the right amount of games and practice time was kept to a minimum. For him and the other kids on the team, it was a good experience. Everyone had fun playing ball in a relaxed setting.

Then we went into the postseason and his rec. team suddenly picked up a travel team mentality. Umpire disputes. Tougher rules. Brackets. Anxieties. Two games in a day. None of those things should happen in a rec. season. That type of intense competition is reserved for the better teams or the ones a little more interested in the game.

A lot of kids join rec. programs because they simply don't want the pressure that comes with a tournament or travel mentality. I've seen first-hand how a growing interest for the game can turn into no interest at all when the intensity-level gets ratcheted up too high.

There's a big difference between wanting to do something and having to do something.

Rec. programs fall into the "wanting to do something" category, and that's where they should stay. There will come a time when a kid decides he wants to get more serious about the game or realizes that his abilities need to be challenged at a higher level. And when that time comes, it should be the kid's choice and no one else's.

Simply tacking tournaments on to a rec. program does not work, and it threatens the interest of the young ballplayers that have chosen to play recreationally. When my son participated in that postseason rec. tournament, I sat in the stands and watched as interest waned.

During a pitching change on the field next to ours, I saw seven fielders sprawled out on the grass, and three baserunners sitting down on their bases. We're not talking about taking a knee while the guy warms up, these kids literally laid flat on their backs. If that doesn't scream, "We really don't want to be here," then I don't know what does.

I've heard a lot of stories about the decline of rec. baseball because of tournament teams taking all the best players. Maybe some of that is true, and if so, so be it. But rec. programs are only going to hurt themselves if they try to duplicate tournament elements in their own seasons. To maintain and grow a rec. program, or what's left of it, requires a little hard work and imagination to keep the kids we have interested in the game.

Let's not bring the tournament atmosphere, and all the pressures that can come with it, into the recreational setting. We need to bring rec. ball back to what it is supposed to be, FUN.