From the Publisher:

From the Publisher
Summer College Baseball Leagues might be, dare I say, the best thing about college baseball. Sure, there’s less intensity than the college season, winning is less dire, there is less money and prestige and national championships, and you’re not together for nine months and/or four years. However, for half of the country, summer weather is so much better; players play almost every night; players can experiment and develop with less pressure, and in general, there is a relaxed joy that seems to be found.

There is a movement to eschew summer baseball, and while good intentioned, baseball is worse for it. “Get stronger” – “Don’t get hurt” – “Don’t get pilfered in the portal” – “You better be ready for the fall.” These are all valid exhortations from college coaches. Yet, at the same time, there is a great lament across the country that players are lacking baseball IQ, don’t know the game, and only care about strikeouts and home runs.

These two things completely contradict each other. You can train, get stronger, be healthy AND play and practice a lot and learn the game. For an industry obsesssed with limiting pitch counts to create healthy arms, why are there more injuries than ever? Maybe it pitchers pitched more, they wouldn’t go max effort every pitch, and maybe learn there are many ways to get hitters out. For hitters, scouts used to say you needed 3,000 at-bats to learn the strike zone. If there’s any truth in that at all, then hitters need to play way more than they do now. For fielders, you can’t possibly practice all the different situations that come up in games, thus, they really need to play a lot.

For every player that is blowing off the summer and having a good college season, there an incredible amount of players that don’t play and don’t have a good college season. Plus, college players can’t see the big picture. The clock is ticking down fast on their baseball careers, so maybe they should just take advantage of this small window of time that they get to play this beautiful game, and they can rest when they’re done.

And maybe the experience of the joy of playing where the games all blur into one on hot summer nights, helps them love the game more,
and in turn, play better.