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Dwindling HB Discussion Participation

What's on your mind?

by Hinky » Mon Sep 03, 2018 10:30 am

:idea: Pump it Up

Everyone's opinion is real in a discussion forum :D

Free advice has no value $?
Or is there value in free advice?

How's the bashing and trashing on DFP?
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by Marriard » Mon Sep 03, 2018 11:42 am

Hinky wrote:Free advice has no value $?
Or is there value in free advice?


Advice is advice. Up to you to determine if it is worth anything more than opinion. Most times you need to get lots of supporting advice or information or knowing more about the source of the advice for you to decide.

I have had great and very valuable free advice and terrible, I have had terrible paid advice and invaluable paid advice. Cost isn't necessarily the greatest indicator of whether it is good advice or not.

How's the bashing and trashing on DFP?


Odd but mostly pretty friendly is probably the best description of it. There is a definite in-crowd of heavy posters that set tone in some of the forums but they are pretty welcoming and you see new people being treated well and staying long-term regularly. They are going to shut down something that gets into personal abuse or goes way off the rails. A posting and the content that was referred to in this thread would not survive moderators at DFP. I like that - others wont and that is OK.

The most contentious threads are on people who post with the expectation that people are just going to agree with them when they are probably wrong or some of the fault is their own - but that is pretty common in most forums.

Technical hitting is probably the most heated. Pitching is very much on a very solid mechanics background. I agree with what is promoted and I researched it pretty heavily which probably makes it easy for me. Rules discussions occasionally go on a bit - that can be my fault :-)
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by Skarp » Tue Sep 04, 2018 10:44 pm

I watched my daughter play softball for about a decade, over 5 years of which were spent year-round in hyper-competitive SoCal travel ball. I'm a fairly bright guy, but even after all of that time (some of which I actually spent coaching) I still consider myself a rank amateur when it comes to the sport. It is literally that complex...and amazing. The thought of me opining about pitching mechanics, or whatever, is borderline absurd. Nobody should listen to me about any of that kind of stuff.

I suspect that there are a large number of softball parents who fall into that general category. They love softball, but it's way more about the family experiences and character-building for them than it is about the technical intricacies of the sport. They are certainly happy to tap into the expertise of experienced veterans on sites like HB, but many are reticent when it comes to posting their own opinions on such topics. And they should be, because they don't know anything.

Look back at all of the best discussion threads over the history of this site. Were they about softball strategy or technical advice? Nope. The best discussions occurred within the soft intersection between the sport of softball and other areas of (far more common) interest like parenting, culture, society, values, etc. And in contradistinction to discussions of pitching mechanics (or whatever), every softball parent has a legitimate opinion or question to contribute to these types of discussions.

I started posting here again recently, and it didn't take a day before the thought-police showed up to tell me what was appropriate to discuss on a "softball" website. That hasn't turned out very well for them, but then I'm not exactly a typical HB contributor. How many interesting opinions have been silenced by this kind of crap? How many people who might have been regular HB participants chose the better part of valor and instead kept their mouths shut?

If you want HB to be vibrant and successful, you need to stop viewing it as a softball website and start viewing it as a parenting website. There are parents of girls here ranging from 8 to 22 years old (and beyond), many of whom are dealing with a whole range of issues for the first time. The politics of rec ball, the realities and requirements of travel ball, raising a successful and happy daughter, dealing with specific challenges in the softball milieu (pole barns, etc.), navigating the recruiting terrain, etc., etc., etc. These things all relate to softball, but none of them are even mostly about softball. They are about life, and every year brings a whole new crop of parents who are starving for advice from people who have been there and done that. So if participation here is dwindling, the regulars here don't need to look beyond their own reflections to find the reason why.
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...or attractiveness.
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by Schmick » Wed Sep 05, 2018 5:40 am

This last season here a third baseman for a 1st year 14u team from one of the larger organizations killed herself. Now the organization held a big memorial, teams all over put the girls initials and number on their helmets or jerseys and I believe Triple Crown Sports even held a tournament in her name.

But never did we hear or have any discussions on why? What caused an 8th grade girl to take her own life in a public park?
An issue like this would certainly move the board and give some insight, something to discuss with our girls.
Instead it was washed over with the usual "suicide is never the answer" message. And with a new season starting this weekend those helmet decals and special jerseys will go in to closets and garages, soon forgotten until it inevitably happens again.
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by PairOfAces » Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:39 am

Schmick wrote:This last season here a third baseman for a 1st year 14u team from one of the larger organizations killed herself. Now the organization held a big memorial, teams all over put the girls initials and number on their helmets or jerseys and I believe Triple Crown Sports even held a tournament in her name.

But never did we hear or have any discussions on why? What caused an 8th grade girl to take her own life in a public park?
An issue like this would certainly move the board and give some insight, something to discuss with our girls.
Instead it was washed over with the usual "suicide is never the answer" message. And with a new season starting this weekend those helmet decals and special jerseys will go in to closets and garages, soon forgotten until it inevitably happens again.



I have an idea of why it happened, not first hand but based on information from a reliable source. But I would never disrespect the family and friends of this poor girl by talking about her issues on a public forum. I think specific talk about something like that would be stepping way over a line.
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by Under the Radar » Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:08 am

In the early days of HB users would report scores even from friendlies, which mad cause for a lot of Smack talk and even some jabs at coaches and Orgs. This would also lead to a lot of teams in verbal wars as well.

I think the scores stopped being active around 2012 which led to a much calmer HB.

JMO......
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by crankshaft » Wed Oct 17, 2018 7:37 am

Few people in NorCal keep an ongoing team pole going. Like to see something like that for all of Cali. Or maybe just SoCal,
and compare the states real top teams come nationals.
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by Under the Radar » Wed Oct 17, 2018 10:28 am

There use to be a member named Bracketolagist who would do a yearly ranking of SoCal teams 12u through 14u
Which also led to a lot of discussion as well.
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by Schmick » Wed Oct 24, 2018 10:35 pm

In 14u in So Cal the top teams would be...

In no particular order.

Mercado Athletics Greg
OC Batbusters Shockey
OC Batbusters Flores
Firecrackers Brashear/Smith
American Pastime Velasquez
Corona Angels Tyson
So Cal Athletics Limo
Firecrackers Venegas
Firecrackers Thornburg/Kaiser
Mercado Athletics Hovermale


My semi educated opinion based on what I have seen the first few months and from what I know based on who went to which teams

I'm sure I left out teams that could be worthy of cracking this top 10. But which of this top 10 would you drop? Go ahead and state your case


and......

GO.
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by Schmick » Fri Oct 26, 2018 4:57 pm

So my list of the top ten 14u teams in So Cal must have been pretty accurate.

To get the traffic flowing let's see some lists in the other age divisions. I only follow the division I have a girl playing in
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