This is Part 1 of a three-part summer series visiting with three former major league All-Stars turned sports dads. They offer sports and life advice about how we can make our kids better players, but also how get the most out of athletic experiences with them.
This week: Youth baseball with Todd Frazier, the former heart of Toms River (New Jersey) Little League who has returned home.
Do you have youth sports figured out?
‘I think if anybody says they know what they’re doing,’ Todd Frazier says, ‘they’d be lying to themselves.’
These words come from someone who spent 11 seasons as a standout in the major leagues, who was the MVP of the 1998 Little League World Series, who led off its final game with a home run and who recorded its last out as a pitcher.
Today, he coaches his son Blake on the same field of his Jersey Shore township where he played as a kid. He broadcasts the annual championships from the one in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where his team toppled Japan.
He watches fellow dads urging on their players, and he knows exactly how they feel.
‘I’m coaching third base, you’re trying to will ’em to hit the ball,’ Frazier tells USA TODAY Sports. ‘It’s the worst. Now, as a parent understanding it, your son’s 0-2 count, we’re in the last inning … as a parent, it’s very hard to distinguish when they’re struggling and when they’re doing well.
‘But everybody’s been there.’
How we handle that moment – and not so much the result our kids produce in it – can define our athletic experiences with them.
‘There’s no book, so you see these parents, some of them are just out of control,’ says Frazier, 39. ‘I’ve learned a lot over the years. I’ve honed back a little bit, understanding that it’s not the end of the world when your kid does strike out with the bases loaded.’
How do we get to that space with our minds and emotions? Frazier, now a sports dad of three – sons Blake, 11, and Grant, 6, who play baseball; and daughter Kylie, 9, a gymnast – spoke to us about gaining the intrinsic value of youth sports while still staying keyed in and competitive.
We were connected through his ‘Squish the Bug’ campaign with OFF! Mosquito and Tick Repellents. It stresses batting fundamentals and how kids can stay active and intent through organized sports.
‘You’re not getting scouted at 12’: When you’re a kid, it’s the experience of sports that matters
Brent Musburger is on the call. Frazier swings and launches the pitch into a sea of people beyond the left field wall in Williamsport.
When Frazier grew up, there was really nothing around that resembled travel baseball. Little League was everything. Now, in some cases, one entity replaces the other.
‘Little League is the best, and I feel bad because a lot of kids aren’t really experiencing it anymore because they’re hearing it from some upper-tier people that say if you don’t play travel ball, you’ll never go to this college and that,’ he says. ‘And I think that’s ridiculous.
‘You’re not getting scouted at 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-,12-years old, man; (not) until you get to the big field.’
Everything, in a way, happens in miniature in Little League. The 12-year-old Frazier, who would grow up to be 6-3, was about 5-2. His 102-pound frame nearly floated around the bases after his leadoff home run and leaped gleefully into a dog pile after it was over.
The events of our sporting lives when we are kids, though, are outsized. Sometimes, we think back to them in slow motion. When Frazier looks back, the end of his team’s magical run is icing on the cake to the full portrait of moments his Little League career provided.
In Williamsport alone, he became good friends with kids from Saudi Arabia and Japan. He traded team pins to other players for theirs and he rode cardboard down the hill at Howard J. Lamade Stadium.
‘I was telling my wife the other day, my team was the last team to play the last game in Little League Baseball,’ he says. ‘Going to Williamsport’s great, but the memories I’ve had were not only for myself but seeing the kids – so-called not really good baseball players – do well and get like a game-winning hit, and to see the smiles on their faces and the parents how excited they are. Those are memories that are lasting. And my success came from the help of a lot of other people. So did I have the skill? Of course. But you know, you need a lot of help as you move along the way.’
The help starts at the grass roots, back to where Frazier has gone, where our sports journey begins. And it starts with you.
A ‘good’ team begins and end with good parents
When kids set out to play baseball, or any sport, big league dreams bounce around their heads. But as they continue onward, the sensory moments they see, feel and experience in real time move front and center.
They gain confidence in small steps: recording an out by throwing the ball to the correct base; kicking it within the progression of forward motion of the game; moving naturally to the open spot on the court for an open shot. As they get a little older, we are the ones – Frazier even admits to doing it – most likely to overanalyze what’s going on.
‘Sure, you lose the game or you’re eliminated, there’s a lot of raw emotion,’ Patrick Wilson told USA TODAY Sports in March. Wilson is Little League International’s president and chief executive officer and a longtime member of the operations ranks of the organization.
‘But shortly thereafter, they’re being 12-year-olds again. They’re stealing peoples’ hats, trading pins … they move on very quickly. Now the adults, the coaches and their parents, they hold onto it a little longer.’
Frazier and his old Little League teammates had a different vibe around them, even by the time they reached Williamsport. He felt zero pressure.
‘None whatsoever,’ he says. ‘And I give the credit to the coaches and the parents as well. I think that’s another thing in youth sports: If you have really good parents, you’re gonna have a pretty good team, whether you win or lose, because you have no complaints. They’re not worried about where their kid’s hitting. And they’re focused on how the coach is coaching and how the kid is getting better each day. And I think that was the big thing for us.’
Ex-teammate Tom Gannon, who would go on to become a police officer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told LittleLeague.org in 2018 that Toms River ‘had no intentions of getting that far. But we had great coaching, we meshed well as a team, and we gained more confidence as each round went on.’
First and foremost, they were allowed to be kids. Think of those first road trips your child takes with a team. There are always a few parents who are sticklers about keeping the players away from pools and amusement parks that might tire them out or otherwise distract them from the ‘reason’ they are on the trip.
‘Of course you want to win,’ Frazier says. ‘That’s just the nature of the beast. But are they getting better? Are they having fun? Are they putting their best foot forward?
‘It comes with time, and I’ve learned a lot over the years.’
‘Sometimes you reach the stars and you hit the moon’: Don’t be afraid to set grand goals
The idea behind Frazier’s new campaign is to make a hitting drill more enjoyable and relatable to kids. As you swing, he teaches, turn your back foot as if you’re ‘squishing a bug,’ which pops your hips through the zone to help with leverage and power.
Frazier shot a commercial with Blake at Toms River’s Little League complex, where his son is playing 11-year-old All-Stars this summer. Next year, Frazier will coach Blake in Little League as his son looks for his own dream shot at Williamsport.
‘It’s a big leap and bound,’ Frazier says. ‘I’m sure he’s going to put his best foot forward. But yes, it’s a goal and I think young kids nowadays need goals, and I think they need to understand: Set your goals high. You want to bat .500 and you bat .400, that’s pretty darn good. So sometimes you reach for the stars and you hit the moon a little bit. That’s still pretty good feat.’
He says, though, he’s never really thought about sports goals he has for his kids. His sons and daughter are the ones developing those.
‘I would love for them all to play professional sports. I think that’s the end goal,’ he says. ‘But knowing how hard it is, I tell my kids all the time: bring energy, emotion, enthusiasm, to anything you do, and you can’t go wrong. Practice the right way. Just be you, but at the same time focus. And I think at this age, if you’re focused and under control and not taking any pitches off, you’re gonna have fun and you’re gonna enjoy the moment.’
Frazier coaches Blake in travel baseball when he’s not playing Little League. I have seen them at tournaments in our region. My son approached Frazier and told me how personable and conversant he was with kids on other teams. It’s a approach Frazier has used to improve his coaching.
‘Expect failure’: It’s an opportunity for your kid to grow
We’re back in that situation many sports parents dread: Our son or daughter is up with the bases loaded. When it happens, Frazier now sits back and observes. Whatever happens, it’s a launching point for teaching.
‘Come here,’ Frazier might say to Blake or one of his other players. ‘I want to know what you learned from this experience and how we could have made it better, or how you could have done better.’
He feels having a pragmatic and good-natured style is more productive than saying, ‘What are you doing? Why didn’t you swing at this pitch?’
We want our children to initiate solutions, but to learn to cope with situations where they don’t succeed. Let them fall and pick themselves up, leaning on you only if they need it.
‘Expect your kid to fail,’ Frazier says. ‘And I think that’s hard for them to understand, because in the world we live in, it’s the now, now, now … why isn’t he doing it now? Why is he doing this? It’s not their swing, it’s not their hands are dropping, it’s not they took their head off the ball. That’s just the nature of baseball, and it’s gonna happen over and over. And you just got to understand, ‘OK, I can live with it, but hopefully he’s getting better next time.”
Next week: Chasing success through a high school and college baseball experience
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.