Major league teams continually go to other countries looking for the best players. For example, some baseball teams are setting up centers in China, Ghana, Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica.
If Ghana surprises you, it is because some of the MLB team’s representatives were impressed with their soccer team players. They believe that if they have such great soccer players, they should also be able to develop great baseball players.
Football has made inroads not only in Europe but in Asia both with teams as well as a spectator sport. Other examples can be found in basketball and hockey. In the U.S., it is safe to say that the professional and many collegiate teams are heavily loaded with foreign talent—up to 50% or more.
It appears that the teams believe that many, if not most, of the athletes that they will be recruiting in the future will be coming from foreign countries. Thus, they believe spending money in these countries to develop players is a wise investment.
Teams now have directors of professional and international scouting whose main task is to travel abroad to different countries looking for athletes to sign. They watch the progress of certain players for years in anticipation of signing them for a farm team or to play professional ball.
Because major league baseball is very interested in getting players from the Dominica Republic, some teams develop training centers there. Training is perhaps a loose term as they in essence develop a center that allows the youngsters to play on a more organized and competitive level.
But yet, the United States has more athletes, more and better facilities, more coaches, more and better equipment and more money involved in sports than any other country in the world. So why do American teams and coaches have to travel the world over to find the best players?
The answer I believe is that we have no system for fully developing the talent that we have. Because of this we must go to other countries that have many more athletes in a particular sport in order to identify some of the better talent.
Understand that the more athletes you have in any one particular sport, the better are the chances that you will have a few great athletes. This is why many sports today are developing programs to get more and more athletes involved. However they are not improving the training programs to develop the many athletes.
Teams may tell you that they develop talent but for the most part it cannot be substantiated. They believe that by giving the athletes an opportunity to display their skills that they will automatically develop into great players. They do not do any specialized training to develop and perfect the technical and physical aspects of the athletes.
Because of this in order to have a winning team, professional sports teams must buy the best players available. Collegiate teams must recruit the best athletes (blue-chip athletes) available. In order to be able to do this successfully the teams must have plenty of expendable money. As a result the best teams are often the richest.
Many sports especially the more popular ones, have minor leagues in which the teams just play one another. They buy or draft many youngsters and place them on teams to play. This, for the most part, is all they do. Thus, the “development” of the talent relies mainly on more and more playing.
Even collegiate teams can be thought of as farm teams for some professional sports since the majority of the professional athletes come from collegiate teams. Basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer and football are good examples, even though they still rely on foreign players to get the best teams.
When we look at the amount of talent that is available in the United States, it is amazing that more is not being done to develop this talent. Perhaps we have become too complacent because we still win in the Olympic Games. We have not felt a strong need to produce better athletes even though the need has been present for a long time in many of the minor sports.
Russian coaches, who developed Olympic and world champions did not have a broad sports base to select from as in the United States. Because of this they had to identify athletic talent at a relatively early age and then develop it to literally make the athlete.
This is why Russian coaches, when they see what is taking place in the United States, are amazed at our lack of scientific advanced training. They just shake their heads and say, “I wish we had what you have. The development of world class athletes would then be much easier. “
But yet, in the US this concept of developing an athlete is unheard of. Coaches still function under the myth that athletic talent is born. It is innate. Either you have it or you don’t. But yet, it is a scientifically proven fact that athletic talent can be developed and perfected.
We should be asking why corporate America, that includes professional sports teams, is not investing more money into true training centers to develop U.S. talent. Playing or expanding the player base is not the best way to develop talent although it does help the “cream rise to the top.”
Playing is great for strategy, but not for developing the technical and physical qualities needed for high-level performance. Effective training can be done without great expenditures of money. In fact, it could be done with much less money than is now being put into foreign countries. Isn’t it time America invested in America instead of foreign countries for athletic talent?
For more information on this topic read Sports: Is It All B.S.? and Build a Better Athlete.