Why Little League?

There is a very good solution for the independent league. I served for a number of years on the largest youth baseball league in our area. We choose after a number of years to affliate with PONY. PONY plays real baseball from 9 years old and up. We had played under LL type rules for 10 years prior to this change because our whole area is LL and even though we were independent we didn't know another way. It took 5 weeks into the season for the league to adjust and by the second season there wasn't a LL around that was turning out the quality product we were. A couple of things also occurred 1) Kids who would transfer back and forth from our league to LL quit doing so because they didn't want to go back to what they called "baby baseball" 2) we found that our catchers really began to develop when thewy had to do more than stop the ball 3) And I know you LL's will not understand this because you think you use it now, but good bunting became a real part of the game

From a league administrative point of view we also liked PONY's philosophy that local problems deserved local solutions. They would not interfer in the operation of your local league as long as you complied with thier tournament regulations.

No, I don't think PONY is the solution for every one but I will tell you that it is no accident the tremendous growth it has experienced.

One problem area we found was that by the second season(spring) a 14 year old could and should be playing at 90'. But LL solution of moving a kid from 60 to 90 at 12 is nuts.

There are other programs other than PONY that will allow you to accomplish what you want without LL vast administrative burden. I urge you to check them out. We looked for 2 years before we picked PONY.