<story><title>Little League wants all your information</title><url>https://honeypot.net/post/little-league-wants-all-your-information/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yTh0rly</author><text>I’m curious since you actually went through the effort to be a part of the org: why do we need to formalize everything?&lt;p&gt;Why not just get kids together to play baseball?&lt;p&gt;Why capital Little capital League?&lt;p&gt;Why do we have to normalize towards an organizational system?&lt;p&gt;Academically it all makes sense; our scientific truth must be rigorously vetted.&lt;p&gt;This all just feels like busy work for no gain for most people. I really don’t get the fucking point?&lt;p&gt;Is it so hard to set up a game between your kids and others as human beings? Why pomp and circumstance?</text></item><item><author>Spooky23</author><text>I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it.&lt;p&gt;I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government gets information for training enrollment.&lt;p&gt;The school enrollment information was used for eligibility... the eligibility requirement was to live or go to school in the territory. It frequently came up for kids in private school outside the zone or kids in shared custody arrangements. There are many edge cases, especially with shared custody, foster or arrangements where “easy” forms of required information just isn’t available for various reasons. Most “nuclear” families provided a birth certificate and any letter from a utility, bank or tax bill.&lt;p&gt;Age is very important for leveling kids appropriately and keeping them safe, which is why birth certificates are required — parents are insane and go to extreme lengths (I personally encountered forged documents, parents who delayed entry into kindergarten to age 6, bogus documents from siblings or cousins, etc) to try to let older kids play in younger levels. It’s a hazard for an 11 year old to pitch or hit against 8 year olds. Little League is used as a way for folks to get kids into elite travel teams, etc.&lt;p&gt;Marketing stuff was totally different and may vary by league. We wanted all communications to our folks to go through and be approved by us. “Bob the plumber” could hand out flyers, get an ad or have a blurb in an email campaign. The big companies (currently GM, Gatorade, Honda in my region) just push materials down and use contests to get personal data.</text></item><item><author>kstrauser</author><text>Oh hey, Hacker News! This is my post.&lt;p&gt;I’m not strictly allergic to proving that I live in a certain place, so long as the evidence is securely deleted afterward. I’m &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; opposed to the idea that they can share all of those records with any of their partners or sponsors as they see fit. For example, “proof of residency 3” includes financial or medical records. Suppose that Large Corporation donates $1,000 to Little League. Per the privacy policy, Little League could share those financial or medical records with them. Nuts to that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>topkai22</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; Is it so hard to set up a game between your kids and others?&lt;p&gt;Yes. Yes, it is actually reasonably hard to coordinate 18+ kids and thier familes (thats the minimum size for two baseball teams), have an experienced adult coach them, and hire a referee (if that is judged to be necessary), coordinate field usage, advocate for local governments to set aside sports and play space and protect existing space from development.&lt;p&gt;Now are many American youth sports leagues a bit nuts about the competitive or developmental aspects? Absolutely, and baseball is one of the worst. I really want a checkbox that says &amp;quot;do you want your kids to play in the major leagues some day&amp;quot; so I can not check that and hang out with other parents just there for fun. But coordinating sports and recreation (and ensuring space and facilities for sports and recreation exist in the first place) is not a trivial exercise and is why most local governments have an entire department set aside for it. Parks and Recreation may be a funny and absurd series, but in real life those people do real work that has real benefits.</text></comment>
<story><title>Little League wants all your information</title><url>https://honeypot.net/post/little-league-wants-all-your-information/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yTh0rly</author><text>I’m curious since you actually went through the effort to be a part of the org: why do we need to formalize everything?&lt;p&gt;Why not just get kids together to play baseball?&lt;p&gt;Why capital Little capital League?&lt;p&gt;Why do we have to normalize towards an organizational system?&lt;p&gt;Academically it all makes sense; our scientific truth must be rigorously vetted.&lt;p&gt;This all just feels like busy work for no gain for most people. I really don’t get the fucking point?&lt;p&gt;Is it so hard to set up a game between your kids and others as human beings? Why pomp and circumstance?</text></item><item><author>Spooky23</author><text>I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it.&lt;p&gt;I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government gets information for training enrollment.&lt;p&gt;The school enrollment information was used for eligibility... the eligibility requirement was to live or go to school in the territory. It frequently came up for kids in private school outside the zone or kids in shared custody arrangements. There are many edge cases, especially with shared custody, foster or arrangements where “easy” forms of required information just isn’t available for various reasons. Most “nuclear” families provided a birth certificate and any letter from a utility, bank or tax bill.&lt;p&gt;Age is very important for leveling kids appropriately and keeping them safe, which is why birth certificates are required — parents are insane and go to extreme lengths (I personally encountered forged documents, parents who delayed entry into kindergarten to age 6, bogus documents from siblings or cousins, etc) to try to let older kids play in younger levels. It’s a hazard for an 11 year old to pitch or hit against 8 year olds. Little League is used as a way for folks to get kids into elite travel teams, etc.&lt;p&gt;Marketing stuff was totally different and may vary by league. We wanted all communications to our folks to go through and be approved by us. “Bob the plumber” could hand out flyers, get an ad or have a blurb in an email campaign. The big companies (currently GM, Gatorade, Honda in my region) just push materials down and use contests to get personal data.</text></item><item><author>kstrauser</author><text>Oh hey, Hacker News! This is my post.&lt;p&gt;I’m not strictly allergic to proving that I live in a certain place, so long as the evidence is securely deleted afterward. I’m &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; opposed to the idea that they can share all of those records with any of their partners or sponsors as they see fit. For example, “proof of residency 3” includes financial or medical records. Suppose that Large Corporation donates $1,000 to Little League. Per the privacy policy, Little League could share those financial or medical records with them. Nuts to that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GeneralMayhem</author><text>You absolutely can find recreational leagues that are less rigorous - although for safety reasons they&amp;#x27;ll still tend to be particular about ages. Baseball is a relatively dangerous sport if there&amp;#x27;s a massive imbalance. It&amp;#x27;s important that pitch speed, bat speed, reaction times, and overall mass scale up smoothly and roughly uniformly.&lt;p&gt;The reason why it&amp;#x27;s so formalized beyond that is that travel ball at 11-12 years old is the beginning of the pipeline to the pros. There are millions of dollars of signing bonuses waiting just a few years down the line, but you don&amp;#x27;t get drafted unless you&amp;#x27;re a high school star, and you don&amp;#x27;t get to play for the high school varsity team unless you&amp;#x27;re getting the coaching from the top-tier youth leagues.</text></comment>