Please email uniforms@arlingtonlittleleague.org if you have any questions.

What does the “player agent” do? My child is 7. What the  does he need an agent for? Is it Jerry Maguire?  Do I need to study up on signing bonuses and performance incentives?

It ain’t like that, folks… From a brochure produced by Little League International:

The role of the player agent in the Little League Program is one of the most important to the successful operation of a local league. The volunteer who elects to serve as the player agent of the league takes on an exacting assignment, but one which offers rewards in the satisfaction of a well balanced league.
…
In general, the player agent represents the league president in the supervision of the player selection system or draft, maintains complete player records, trading and replacements, eligibility and team rosters.

But what does that mean to us here in Arlington? We in ALL have a rich tradition of competitive balance and that is thanks to a tradition of capable player agents dedicated to fairness in our league. It is because of these volunteers that we boast balance across the league, and hard-fought battles in games and for division titles.

Other leagues allow coaches to form their own teams. This way of forming teams has its attractions,  but it can all too often lead to unfair recruitment, manipulation of team assignments, and frequent lopsided scores. A Player Agent oversees the team formation process, and is therefore responsible for our efforts to obtain equitable distribution of talent across all teams. At ALL we’re proud of our efforts to create competitive balance and fairness.

The bulk of the Player Agent’s responsibility comes from the Majors and AAA divisions, but (s)he represents all players at all levels. Direct any questions about the following to the Player Agent, and/or to your league commissioner:

• Coach, teammate, and carpool requests
• Recommendations on level of play
• STEP
• Team change exceptions

This job is not an easy one. The Player Agent can always use the helpful hands of knowledgeable baseball folks. If you’re interested in joining the team, send an e-mail to playeragent@arlingtonlittleleague.org.

This year’s STEP sessions will be on Sunday, February 26, 2012 and Sunday, March 4, 2012, from 12 PM to 6:30 PM.  Both sessions will take place at Swanson Middle School, located at 5800 Washington Boulevard. Players will only need to come out on one of the two days, and the time commitment should be no more than 30-45 minutes, including warm-up time. We’ll be putting together the schedule for these sessions over the next few weeks, and will provide you with the schedule in early February.  If you have any requests or questions regarding the STEP sessions, please feel free to contact the Player Agent, Dan Alvarez, by e-mailing: playeragent@arlingtonlittleleague.org

After the two STEP sessions, your child will be selected by a coach through our player assignment process by early March. Remember: Nobody will be left out; everybody makes a team. We will do our best to honor requests to play with friends, school groups, and specific coaches, but we can’t guarantee that we can honor every request (particularly as we ensure creation of competitively balanced teams).  Also, if you have friends who have yet to sign up, please tell them to sign up soon.

In particular, you may have noticed some changes to our website and our emails over the last few months.  With a lot of hard work by some very dedicated volunteers, we’ve upgraded the website, we’re starting to use more sophisticated, HTML-based emails, and we’ve established a Facebook page and a Twitter profile where we’re going to post relevant information about our league.  We’re trying to leverage every tool at our disposal to communicate with you and make sure you have as much information as we can provide as quickly as we can provide it.

This is all part of what we’re calling our “ALL 2.0″ strategy.  When Arlington Little League first unveiled its website back in the late 1990s, we were one of the first youth baseball leagues in Northern Virginia — and maybe even in the US — to have a presence on the World Wide Web.  Over the past 15 years, though, the way people use the Internet has changed — “Web 2.0″ is about leveraging social media and other tools to engage and interact and share information efficiently as effectively.  We recognize that we need to adapt, too.

And this blog is part of that strategy.  Over the coming months, our volunteers and Board leaders will be putting together blog posts to address some of the questions we’ve heard over the years:  how does All Stars work?  What is Team Assignment Day?  What’s going on with the 50-70 program?

The first topic we’d like to hear back from you about is the team assignment process, particularly for the AAA and Majors level. At those levels, we try to keep teams competitively balanced. We are required by Little League International to follow such a process but are always open to ideas about what we can do better. If anybody has any thoughts, comments, questions, we’d love to hear from you in the comment section below!

Thanks, and please check in with us regularly.  ”Like” us on Facebook.  ”Follow” us on Twitter.  We’ll do everything we can to make it worth your while!

Now that the 2011 Fall Ball season has come to a close, we want to make you aware that registration for the spring season is open. And, because almost (if not more than) half of the fall schedule was erased by inclement weather, we are offering a $15 credit to Fall Ball registrants toward the Spring 2012 season.

This credit is available through the end of the month, and is a one-time offer due to the high number of cancellations caused by rain this fall.  This is not a new or continuing policy.  We simply feel that, while the coaches did a fantastic job when allowed, the weather did not quite allow ALL families to get their full money’s worth this season.

That said, I’d like to share a few of my favorite stories from this fall… Stories that let me know that the joys of a baseball season weren’t completely washed out this fall.

1. First, while helping at a practice early in September, I offered to hand out jerseys to the players.  One player came up and asked for number 8.  I asked him if he wanted that number because he loved Cal Ripken, Jr.  He stared at me for a moment and said, “I don’t know what that is.”
2. A few weeks later, once the sun came out and let us play a game or two, I got an e-mail from a parent telling me that her son’s Minors level team had turned a triple play.  These are seven, eight, and nine-year-olds, and they’re turning triple plays!
3. Finally, just this past Saturday, I watched from the bleachers as a young ballplayer put on catcher’s gear.  He grabbed the mask, studied it, and pulled it over his head to complete the outfit.  Then, he took two steps over to his coach and asked, “Coach, what position am I playing?”  In retrospect, I think the kid may have been in on the joke, but still…

Do you have any great stories from the fall season?  Do you have any great pictures of the players at play?  Please consider sharing them with us. We always have a use for more pictures of Arlington Little Leaguers, and if you’d like, we might use them for our flyers and our new blogging feature on our website!  You can contribute by e-mailing publications@arlingtonlittleleague.org or by joining and contributing to the “Arlington Little League” page on Facebook.

And for the love of the baseball gods, teach your kids about Cal Ripken, Jr.!

See you soon,

–
Adam Balutis
President
Arlington Little League
“Where ALL Kids are Stars!”