Introduction To Baseball Parenthood

Rob Naddelman: Through a Parent’s Eyes

Over 13 years ago, I started building Baseball Factory with my former University of Pennsylvania baseball teammate, Steve Sclafani. We were both fresh off the baseball playing field with a lot of ideas and dreams for how we could help high school players through the college search process. For me personally, I wound up at Penn not because I had an organization like the Baseball Factory behind me helping to find the right fit academically, athletically, and socially, but my brother was a current student at the school and got to know the baseball coach who began recruiting me. My college search happened almost completely by chance.

In the early years of Baseball Factory, I looked at everything through the eyes of a high school baseball player aspiring to play in college. I tried to think of all the opportunities that I did not have as a player in order to figure out how Baseball Factory could connect more talented HS players to the correct college programs.

Over the more recent years, I have been blessed to become a parent to my own children. I currently have two young girls. Now that I am a parent myself, I tend to think about the world at Baseball Factory more through the eyes of our parents than our players. I have been better able to understand why parents act a certain way and why most of the time they want to take charge and do what is “right” for their children, no matter what the consequences.

I love my children more than anything in the world and I know as they continue to grow I will do everything in my power to support every endeavor they take part in. They may choose to pursue athletics, or it may be the arts, music, etc. that peeks their passion and interest. Even at a young age, I find myself having to fight the urge to do everything for my girls. My first reaction is to always want to jump in and fix a problem or help them through a challenge faster. I can only imagine how much more challenging it will become as they grow up and mature into young women.

Over my 13 years at Baseball Factory, I have seen many different dynamics with the interactions between our baseball players and their parents. I have seen players that have been outright disrespectful to their parents right in front of me and have seen parents that don’t allow their sons to get a word in edge wise when I ask them a question about their future.

My mission within this blog is to try and help parents understand what I feel is the appropriate balance between when to step in and help your son with the college search process, and when to push him out to the front to do it on his own. It is a delicate balance to try and reach to help them swim and not sink, not to be too overbearing, not to be too passive, etc. I will try to give you examples from clients we have worked with, what to avoid, and how to best approach the process. I look forward to writing over the upcoming weeks and hope this blog becomes a valuable tool for baseball mom’s and dad’s around the world.

Naddelman is a former two-time All Ivy League Third Baseman at the University of Pennsylvania, where he competed in a College World Series Regional. He has served as the President of Baseball Factory for the past 13 years, and also is the Executive Director of Baseball Factory's charitable arm The B.A.S.E. - H.I.T. Foundation. Naddelman and Steve Sclafani (CEO) have been featured in Business Week and CNN for their work in building Baseball Factory into the nation's leader in player development and college placement.