Sandlot Baseball: The Way the Kids Like It

Sandlot baseball has given way to the organized variety nearly everywhere. And that’s a shame. Real uniforms, real fields, real umpires, and real fans sitting in the stands look and feel like a large advancement over the ragtag sandlot scene. But it’s a real step backward as a life experience for children. It’s not hard to understand the richness of the sandlot experience.

Equal teams, every game

Kids instinctively know that the only way to have fun playing a team sport is if the teams are somewhat equal in talent. So they always divide themselves up that way when left on their own. Adults forget this. They commandeer Little League teams, engineer tryouts and scout the local talent as if they were general managers. Their goal is to field the strongest team possible. Result: some teams lose almost every game while some others win almost every game. The players get false signals about their talent level (even good players on bad teams get tired of losing every game) and the games are less fun. Sandlot kids understand this principle so well that they will modify the teams if one player has to leave early or if new players show up halfway through the game. Team formation is the subject of informal negotiation among the children, not the result of manipulation by adults living out their own Dan Duquette dreams.

The role of rules

Kids also understand that rules need to be flexible to serve the higher goal of having fun. So anything left of that rock near shortstop is foul and invisible runners abound. If someone thinks up a good new rule during the game, it is quickly embraced and adopted. Try that in Little League.

Disputed calls

Close plays are always the subject of shouting regardless of the level at which the game is played. But on the sandlot, interesting things happen. First, there is a loud negotiation session. Then, after a while, either the biggest kid or a kid with a reputation for fairness will settle the argument. Players who argue every call are ignored. Sometimes teams alternate winning close calls. And once the argument is over, it’s over. You’ll never hear sandlot players complaining about a bad call on the way home.

The schedule

Sandlot games are spontaneous. Kids play when they want to. A game can start with two kids on each team (anything left of second base is either foul or an out) and expand as additional players show up, with a new player sometimes having to recruit another so teams stay even.

Here again, some negotiation skills are involved, but the goal remains having fun playing and trying to win an exciting game. By contrast, the long season and formal schedule of organized baseball intrudes on other activities like weekend trips with family or friends. Sandlot players may be late for dinner, but they never miss out on camping trips.

No fans

Playing in front of fans, even well meaning and well-behaved family and friends, introduces a level of pressure that most kids don’t like and shouldn’t have to worry about. On the sandlot, dropping a fly, crying if you get hit in the face by the ball, or criticizing another player all quickly recede into insignificance and are forgotten. Not so when thirty adults have seen your mistake.

These comparisons do not rely on any of the well documented horror stories of organized baseball. And they are not limited to baseball. The same could be said about football, basketball or any other team sports. The point is that kids approach sports and games differently than adults do. We make a mistake when we superimpose adult values and structures on all of our children’s activities.