How to Set Your Travel Baseball Program Apart

Take a look at a sample of five travel baseball programs’ mission statements or marketing materials or websites and you will likely find that each of them purports to “not only develop baseball players, but also MEN”. As a current facility owner, player developer, and a former Marketing VP, who was once constantly looking to position goods or services via a compelling point of difference, I find this lazy. If every single travel program is developing not just the player, but the man, how are any of them any different? How about some specifics? How are you developing the man? Is telling them not to throw their helmet "developing the man"? Here’s an idea – tell us what’s different about your program. After all, a parent is choosing your baseball program for how you develop baseball players, not for finishing school and manners. How do you practice, where do you practice, what do you teach, what have they have achieved? We know you’re all going to teach some life lessons in practice and in games, lessons about adversity, about hard work, about winning and losing. But you’re ALL going to do that, because that's the the game of baseball does. If you’re better at building the man, tell me why, or even more importantly, tell me why you’re better at developing baseball players, because after all, it’s our job as parents to build the man.