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My son was born in February. Alas.
Because there's nothing else to do in November?
I would say that the level of enthusiasm for baseball within a population is more important than the size of the population in determining how many good players emerge from it. At one level this is obvious: compare China with the US with the Dominican Republic. But, the same phenomenon is relevant to questions like how Babe Ruth would perform in the present day. It becomes possible to suppose that the quality of play in the '30s really was reasonably close to the quality of play now. (Whether that was the case, I have no idea. And there's the issue of segregation.)
Yup, but not mentioned is the possibility that there's some small effect from when major league and minor league seasons end. Once players are home full-time, they're probably more likely to end up with pregnant wives, and players with bloodlines are more likely to be scouted/noticed. Probably not a huge effect, but I'd expect that the effect might be more pronounced with children of professional baseball players.
It is amazing that being "old" or "young" for your league, A-ball or AA, still means a lot and is a factor in the very best baseball projections systems.
I wonder if a similar finding could be made regarding academic achievement? It would be a strong case for changing public education for the better, if only the teachers unions got out of the way.
The spark has to be kindled early however, because when kids start playing in high school the August - October birthdays are no longer an advantage. Because of school birth cutoffs, kids born in those months are among the youngest in their grade, and kids born in November and the months following have an advantage.
They try to predict the future by looking at the stars; whether it be actual stars or baseball stars.
It depends where the kids are in school. In some places, August-October kids are the oldest in their grades.
Banned from SABR-L, it's "Baseball and the Stars."
and more human beings are born in august than any other month. ugh.
i was born in may AND i am a lefty and it sure didn't help ME none. the twins were born in early may AND they throw lefty - we'll see.
but the age/size thing is big (hahahahaha)
the only reason i was able to get my 4 year old in skool with a birthday 2 days over the deadline is because he's HUGE for his age. if he was a smallish guy with a genius IQ they would have told me i had to hold him back because of his size.
and i am really disgusted by all the people who told me i should have held him back anyhow because it is great for a male to be so much larger than all the other kids in his own grade
interesting that you never hear that about females.
sexism is real
I was born in May, and was a lefty pitcher in Little League!
Unfortauntely when you are forced to resort to junk at age 15, you really don't have much of a future ahead of you
My mom taught kindergarten for most of her working life at a private school that was effectively for kids with either some sort of problem or who were born just past the deadline and thus the youngest kids in their grade. She always thought that they were at an extreme disadvantage, and remained so for several years. When you're a 5-year-old an extra 300 days is ~15% of your life. There's no easy way to overcome that, and no obvious way to fix it for everyone in a system based on a school year that's the same for everyone.
It makes sense if you are playing as a "10-year old", but not if you're playing as a "fourth grader". With the April cutoff there are 4 months worth of kids (May-August) who are playing with kids not in their grade. Which means that they're not playing with (or against) two thirds of their friends. Most of these kids should be playing for fun, so grouping kids with their grade should be done.
I figured him out, though. He'd throw wild fastballs until he got to two balls, and then he would start lobbing batting practice tosses down the middle until he got to two strikes before resuming the shelling. So I'd take pitches until he got two balls and then cream his next pitch. Every time. It was fun.
Interesting. My wife and I were thrilled when our second daughter was born on August 30th, since that meant that we wouldn't be on the hook for a year's worth of private pre-school tuition. Now, she is pretty good with the wiffle bat, but I guess that there's not much chance of an MLB career.
I played on an 11-12 team with the 13-year-old son of a local celebrity. The poor kid was probably retarded, completely uncoordinated, and struck out in maybe 90% of his at bats. His dad always brought us Big League Chew and post-game oranges.
Where I come from, it was common knowledge that certain parents held their kids back a year before sending them to kindergarten to give them a big advantage in school sports later on.
- they do this with females too?
here in texas, i would bet a huge percent of males are held back not because they stupid, but so they will be larger for their grade. theres a lot of 20 year olds in hs
but i won't do that to my son. i mean he actually LOVES skool (he must get that from his sperm donor) and he WANTS to go. he can't help how he looks. so i am not gonne tell him he's not good enough. i got told that my whole life and i'm not gonna do that to MY kidz.
besides he gonna look like a freak if i make him wait another year to start kindergarten and everybody gonna think he's retarded
Let me guess: the local celebrity was Tom Tucker. Am I right?
When I was growing up, it was all the rage to send kids to kingergarten as early as possible so as to get them started on their education quickly. Now, there are parents who try and delay their children's entrance into kindergarten for a couple of years so their kid can be bigger than the other kids in high school and get an athletic scholarship to college.
What I really wanted to figure out for this article is the exact age or ages at which this phenomenom occurs. Unfortunately, information on the birth months of little leaguers is not exactly easy to come by. I had to settle for separating major leaguers into those from the 50 states and those from elsewhere, plus a look at minor league players by age.
I also have to think that there must be some way to fix this problem by consciously changing who gets the extra attention now given to the older kids of an age year. Also, I wonder if there is anything that major league clubs could do differently in the amateur drafts (perhaps with the help of more instruction) to compensate for this phenomenom. (Or maybe they could take greater adavntage of the phenomenom; I'm not really sure)
When I first started working as a sportswriter in Indiana in the early 1990s, it became apparent that holding back kids was a common practice, particularly for the sons of high school basketball coaches. And there was one coach who admitted to me that he timed his procreative efforts so that his kids would have summer birthdays (just missing Indiana's cutoff).
why don't you say they hold back MALES? even non-sports males so he will be larger???!!!
who here seen parents/skool hold a FEMALE back a year ONLY because she small??? or even not large?
no wonder so many people think if it is a male athlete it must me practically retarded - because they freaking 7 years old in kindergarten (yep. if they juuuuuuust past the deadline)
Interesting. That's exactly what I was thinking about as I read your article. The NYT also had a long article on this issue a while back.
I've heard about it happening. It's not only an athletic issue. Some parents don't want their kids to be the very youngest in their class because they don't want them to be compared academically to kids that have had an additional year of development.
I don't really know how widespread it is, but there's a perception that it's pervasive (among the youngest kids eligible for kindergarten) in some communities.
My wife is convinced that our son is going to be the only kid with a September birthday in his kindergarten class (September 30 is the cutoff for entry).
My two oldest kids are among the older kids in their classes. My youngest is one of the youngest (he's in kindergarten this year). At this point, he does seem to be behind his older siblings academically at the same point, though I'm not really sure how long it will last. I doubt he'll ever become the student his oldest brother is, though that has more to do with attitude than birthday.
i would think you males be wanting to fight sexism. you think it is GOOD to tell a male that it ain't brains matter in skool but how LARGE you are?
as for my kid, well yeah he gonna always be the youngest but he ain't the dumbest by a LONG shot. and he WANTS to go and he just fine. and yeah it is a problem that people think he immature for his age because they think he is around 7 and he's only 4. but that would be even WORSE if i hold him back and people wondering why a 8 year old in kindergarten.
how is it good for anyone to always be held back?
any of you been told you too dumb, got held back? you not good enough? and i will NOT do that to my kid ONLY because he happens to be male
this keeping kidz in hs until they 20 years old is dumb. and people wondering why kidz be dropping out in 8th or 9th grade when they 16
Who here is saying that? It seems everybody here agrees with you.
But if it's not clear, the people I'm talking about are not holding their kids back because they think they're dumb, but because they think it will maximize their academic success.
At it's heart, it's the parents that think it will give their kids a better shot to get into Harvard (though I think the attitude trickles down from there, until you get people that just don't want to be "the suckers" that aren't gaming the system).
Not to mention people that honestly believe their children, though perfectly normal, don't benefit from constant comparisons to older, bigger, stronger, more experienced, more coordinated, more emotionally and intellectually developed kids. (Not SOSHy gets at this too, though from the perspective of someone that didn't hold the young-for-his-grade kid back.)
(The NYT article that I read a while back noted that states have different age cutoffs for kindergarten, but across the board the teachers think the youngest kids are not well prepared for kindergarten. But the youngest kids in state A may be 6 months older than the youngest kids in state B. This suggests that the teachers are deciding who is not well-prepared, not based on some objective standard, but relative to the other, older kids in the classroom.)
When I look at the kids at my son's daycare (he's 3 1/2, so he'll be up for kindergarten in 2009), it seems that his true peers are the kids that are within 4 to 6 months of him. Kids older than that are "the big kids." Kids younger than that are "the babies." If he's the very youngest in his kindergarten class, then he'll mostly be surrounded by "big kids" with a smaller number of true peers. That may be a reason for some parents to hold their kids back.
(Conversely, if my son is among the oldest in his kindergarten class, which would be the case if he started in 2010, he would be in a class of "babies" plus a few of his peers. That may be a reason for some parents not to hold their kids back.)
My wife believes very strongly in having kids that are old for their grade, not because of athletic or even academic success, but because she thinks having them be more mature will benefit them in lots of different ways, including socially. Or sons were both born in early spring, so there wasn't ever much question about what grade they'd be in, but if they'd even been early-summer babies, she would have held them back.
My birthday is in November, and I think the school cutoff when I was growing up was December 1. So I was always very young for my grade; I started college at age 17. My wife blames whatever social shortcomings I have on my relative youth.
sorry, i guess i am just mad at males in general especially the ones i know and am especially touchy about my poor kid who is different and if he like skool and WANT to go they should let him and leave off giving him shtt about hating sports likeing weird music etcetcetc. so he's younger - so freaking WHAT - so he is bigger - so freaking WHAT - i am freaking tired of this shtt
but what i am trying to say about the "dumb" thing is that you have to tell your kid that he's not good enough even if he really IS good enuf and i absolutely REFUSE to do that to my kid. life is tough and he best learn it sooner then later.
and fact is that if you could somehow get classes with kids born on the exact same day there would still be a range of maturity/brainz etc
boots,
and how much does your wife want to delay each kid??? so what is the point of a grade? she wanna wait to put a kid in freaking kindergarten until they all eight or something so he is guaranteed to be the best? and this is supposed to be, what, helpful? where she gonna draw the line? why send your 5,6,7 year olds to skool at all?
SOMEone is gonna be the oldest, someone gonna be the youngest, someone gonna be the smartest, someone gonna be the dumbest and some gonna be more mature than others. you can't make everyone just like everybody else even though that is what skools really want to do
besides, i think there is something crazy in keeping kids in freaking hs until they are so freaking old
it is sort of like prospects - who does harvard think more of - a kid who graduates hs when he is 16 or a kid who graduates at 20 because his parents kept him back for 2 years
and just like i am tiny you have to learn to deal with all the disadvantages life give you. my mother told me that her being 5'11" AND wearing 3" heels gave her a tremendous advantage in dealing with males because they couldn't (literally) overlook her. so instead of shrinking/cringing like females taught to do back then, she did exactly the opposite.
You've obviously got a whole other set of matters that you have to deal with as a parent than some of us do. (Edit: And I apologize if that comes across as condescending. I just meant that there's no one-size-fits-all answer to these questions, and that becomes particularly obvious when your specific concerns are contrasted with mine.)
In the cases I was talking about, it's not holding kids back, really. It's more like there's a discretionary period for starting kindergarten. If you want to start the kid when she's first legally allowed to go, you can, but if you want to wait until she's legally required to go, you can do that too. There's nothing sacred about August 31, or September 30, or December 31, or May 31 or whatever the cutoff date is in whatever state. (There's been a trend to move these dates earlier because they may have an effect on test scores a couple years down the line.)
In the instances I've been thinking of, and in Boots' case, too, I'd guess, it's the kids at the tail end (say, the last two or three months) of the class whose parents elect to start them a year later.
It's just a matter of opting out of being the youngest kid at the end of a range, because they can be the oldest kid at the beginning of another range. They don't want their kids to be two years older than anyone else. They just want them at the head of their group of peers, rather than assigned (arbitrarily) to the end.
I agree that, as part of a larger pattern, it doesn't make any sense because there's always going to be a youngest kid and an oldest kid. If it happens too much, it really hurts the youngest kids that don't start a year later, because then they're even younger than the rest of their class. (And as the NYT article pointed out--I should really dig up a link, I guess--this is disproportionately the kids from the poorest families for whom another year of paid childcare may be a hardship).
In the end, I think everyone's just trying to do what they think is best for their kid and their family. Personally, I think I would just accept the default date unless there was some specific concern that starting an year later might address.
Her contention is that, over the long haul, kids who are old for their grade come out more mature and more successful in life than kids who are young for their grade. That's what this is about. It's not about trying to get your son to play college football at a D1 program, because believe me, my boys aren't.
We could have held our youngest child back, since he fell within that period where it was an option. Our feeling was, as long as he was ready from a maturity level, we'd rather have him start school earlier as it might artificially lower the age gap between him and his older siblings (who are in third and sixth grades, but at the same school). We figured it might foster a slightly tighter relationship between the oldest and the youngest boys as they grew up. Academics didn't really play a part, and athletics would never play a part in our decision making on the issue.
That their mom is the school principal contributes to ease any concerns on his readiness.
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