Getting Amateur Baseball Started In Your Area

Baseball: the nation's favourite pastime. Many of us remember playing baseball as kids, but it doesn't seem to be as popular these days. Many parents are having trouble getting their kids involved.

If your child doesn't like baseball, that's fine. But what if they do love to play baseball? Then the difficulties faced by parents to get their kid involved in baseball become a serious problem.

And what about you? Facilities for junior baseball is usually pretty common. What about you and your peers? Is there a recreational baseball league in your area for either adults or kids? If not, why not start your own? It may be easier than you think.

Generate interest and get the right people together

If you like baseball, then I'm willing to be that you have a bunch of friends who also like baseball. Let them all know you're interested in getting people together to form a league or a team. Word will spread.

You should work out what kind of play you want to engage in. Do you want your team(s) to be open to players of varying skill levels? Or do you want games to be more serious shows of talent? When it comes to recruiting players for teams, you need to determine what kind of players you are looking for. If you're starting a league for kids, you need to be careful here. Going purely for talent creates exclusivity. This may upset children (and, perhaps more worryingly, their parents!).

If you want to get serious, you should have tryouts. And if you want tryouts, you need somewhere to play. But somewhere to play will do you no good if you don't have the right equipment!

Getting the right equipment

This one can be tricky. If you don't know how many people are eventually going to join, you may not have access to the right numbers. By 'numbers' we're referring to equipment requirements. Besides, funding the acquirement of this equipment by yourself can get expensive.

See if others have baseball equipment already. A lot of people have bats, gloves and balls lying around. The only problem with this is that it creates an inconsistency in brand and quality. If you're looking to play casually, this probably won't be an issue. But if you want to get serious, you may need to handle getting equipment yourself at somewhere like Sports Depot. See if you can get together a few people to pool together the funds for it. A less popular option is to charge members a fee for being in the league or team. But people may be more willing to do this than you think!

Find the right area to practise and play in

If you're lucky, there will be a public field in your area. This is a great place for people to come together to practise. However, you will need to be careful about public safety. You can't just hit baseballs around as hard as you can!

See if a local gym or sports facility will allow you to hire an area for you to play. They may even be able to provide other useful items, like scoreboards or whistles.