Hey everyone, it’s Whatever Wednesdays again. Today “Let’s Talk Kid’s Baseball.“

Let’s Talk Kid’s Baseball

As you guys have probably figured out by now, I’m a pretty avid baseball fan. I’ve kind of rediscovered my love for the game since moving back to Hawaii. The major reason for this is because Time Warner Spectrum gets Sports Net LA so I get to watch pretty much all the Dodgers games. The second reason is because now I have children who I can teach about the great game of baseball.

Kylie actually prefers soccer over baseball. However, the soccer team got filled for her age group so she decided to try baseball this summer. She probably gets this from my dad and my brother Alan — as they were pretty good at soccer in their time. I never really played when I was growing up other than during recess. Lucas will play soccer with his sister when she wants to kick the ball around — however, he prefers to throw and hit the ball and adamantly states he wants to do baseball.

For the sake of completeness, this is the soccer ball (size 3) we have:

Ours is actually the slightly older version which is pink. However, I’m sure Kylie would prefer this new purple and blue version — since she prefers purple over everything else.

Are they right handed or left handed?

Since both of my kids are right handed when it comes to writing, I assumed they wanted to throw and bat right handed. However, they both jumped into the left-handed batter’s box, so I’ve decided to let them just go with that.

Kylie has pretty good arm naturally and throws right handed, as you would expect. Lucas, however, hasn’t decided which hand to throw with. I gave him a right hander’s glove to start with— but he tries to put it on his right hand and throw with his left hand. I want him to be comfortable, so I just bought him left hander’s one also and he can choose himself.

What equipment did you buy?

There are a lot of sites about which gear to chose for your kids (and for dads and moms to teach their kids). As you would expect, I did some extensive research. However, here are my picks:

Gloves:

Rawlings Players 9 in Baseball Glove with Softcore Ball

Kylie chose Pink/Purple.
Lucas wanted Red/White/Blue.

RSB 13 in Outfield Glove

This glove is for me (and my wife) Click here

I realize this is a softball glove, but it actually functions well for dads and moms since it’s a bit oversized. It helps to catch some of the errant throws.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with these gloves. The fact that their gloves came with softcore balls is nice. Although we seem to have lost them somewhere already. Hopefully I can find them again.

Bats:

So I was just planning to get them whatever the best selling bat on Amazon was for kids which is this one:

However, I made a new friend who coaches baseball and he said that the best bat for kids who are just starting out is this one:

Specifically, you want the 24 ” / 11 oz bat because it’s the lightest. He said being the lightest bat really helped kids just learning to play get used to swinging and just making contact. I can imagine that when you just start, hitting the ball of the tee is the best feeling — so you want to nurture that by making it as easy as possible. As such, I went ahead and bought that one — even though it’s more expensive. He said it’s kind of sold out everywhere, except for this place called Sports Basement.

Anything else?

I think that’s it for now, however, we may need a few of these soon:

Just to be clear, the kids aren’t doing Little League or Cal Ripken or anything too organized like that. It’s a pretty low-key kind of thing where the kids get together every Saturday and do practice and then a game. I don’t think they even keep score or anything like that.

This is mostly just to get them used to the game to see if they like it. After that we’ll decide if we want to continue with Little League or Cal Ripken since it’s a pretty significant time commitment. Kylie has already said she doesn’t want to do baseball, and wants to do soccer instead, but who knows. Kids are fickle.

TL;DR

The kids are starting baseball soon.

Here’s what’s been happening and the stuff we bought.

We’ll see if the kids want to continue on or not.

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

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