By: Tommy Druen
Guest Columnist
Having a teenage son has taught me many things. One uncomfortable truth I’ve learned is when he’s shopping for clothes, I need to find a way to kill time. He can agonize over the most minute details, sizes, colors, patterns and the clock seems to stop entirely once he disappears into a fitting room.
The other day, he was shopping at a nearby sporting goods store. In the interest of impartiality, I’ll leave it anonymous. But let’s just say it’s the kind of place that becomes a risky Google search if you forget the apostrophe in its name.
While my son agonizingly debated whether he wanted a fishing shirt with a hood or without, I wandered through the rest of the store and found myself in the baseball section. The inventory itself didn’t surprise me, but the price tags sure did. I picked up what looked like an ordinary youth mitt and nearly dropped it when I saw the sticker price. $329. Thinking it had to be some kind of premium model, I checked others nearby. Out of about ten options, the cheapest ran $189.
That’s when I started doing the math. What does it actually cost to outfit a kid for baseball these days? Bats ran about the same as mitts. Cleats were roughly half that. Batting helmets hovered around $75, batting gloves another $50. Even assuming the team provides uniforms, you’re looking at a minimum of $750 just to get a kid on the field.
I couldn’t shake those numbers as I kept walking. I didn’t even stop in the football and soccer sections. I’m sure those numbers would’ve been just as sobering. But when I reached the basketball aisle, I felt a small moment of hope. Surely basketball, the sport that needs almost nothing but a ball and a hoop, would break this pattern of astronomical prices.
Then I picked up a ball. Granted, it was top-of-the-line, but the price was $229. Even the mid-range options routinely hit $100. And we all know basketball shoes aren’t exactly cheap.
But this doesn’t even touch the travel team culture that’s exploded over the last decade. Team fees, hotel rooms, tournament admissions, parking passes. It adds up fast. I recently shelled out $40 per day just to watch my daughter and her 11-year-old teammates play volleyball for a weekend.
That’s when the reality hit me. In chasing opportunities and better equipment, we’ve effectively priced out entire segments of the population from youth sports altogether.
I’ve heard the nostalgia expressed often enough that it rings true. Baseball was better when kids played for the local American Legion in sweatpants and a t-shirt, competing against neighbors rather than traveling to corporate-sponsored tournaments wearing expensive gear. That argument likely has some merit.
I looked into the research and found some revealing numbers. Youth sports participation overall has climbed over the decades, though much of that growth reflects expanded opportunities for girls. The economic data, however, paints a starkly different picture. According to 2022 figures, 70% of children from families earning more than four times the poverty level play organized sports. Meanwhile, only 31% of children from families below the poverty line do.
Certainly, other factors contribute to that gap. Transportation challenges matter. The reality that many teenagers must work to help support their families matters. But I’d wager a lot of it comes down to simple affordability.
What troubles me most gets at the core contradiction. Sports have always held a special place in American life because they promised meritocracy. It’s supposed to be the one arena where your background doesn’t matter, where connections and family income are irrelevant. Theoretically, winning depends solely on who performs best.
But somewhere along the way, we’ve turned that promise on its head. We’ve created a system where the starting line isn’t the same for everyone. Where talent alone isn’t enough if you can’t afford the entry fee. The child born into a wealthy family gets the opportunity to discover if he has genuine talent. The child born into poverty never even gets that chance.
We tell ourselves we’re investing in our children’s futures, and perhaps we are for those who can afford it. But we’re constructing barriers around the very institution we claim should transcend privilege and economic status. We’re undermining the fundamental promise that talent and hard work matter more than family wealth. That’s not the American ideal we’ve long celebrated in sports. And honestly, I’m not certain it’s a game worth playing.
