Pottstown Scout Team sparked a heated dialogue on social media with its latest antics at a youth baseball tournament. The 12U players showed the utmost disrespect toward their opponents with the goal of going viral on social media through a series of egregious bat flips.
It worked…
These kinds of youth baseball organizations are at the center of debate. Should this kind of behavior be encouraged? Some people think it is harmless fun. Others think it sets the children up for failure.
What is Pottstown Scout Team?
Most simply put, Pottstown Scout is a youth travel baseball tournament organization. It was founded by the content creators behind the YouTube channel CS99TV, a group of friends in South Jersey that tried their hand at viral videos when they were sent home from college in the spring of 2020.
They started with simple things, like revealing the secrets of magic tricks or challenging a group of kids to tackle them for $100, to varying degrees of success. And then they hit the social media jackpot.
The content creators went extremely viral by pretending to be a baseball scout for a fake university, Pottstown. The video recurring video series actually became so popular that they had to stop because they could no longer get away with the bit.
One thing led to another and the mid-20s college graduates decided to create a real youth baseball team. The Pottstown Scout Team was born.
Pottstown loads its rosters with elite youth baseball players from all over the country and puts them all on the same team for a single weekend tournament. The goal is to win the tournament, obviously. However, it is just as important to create content. Videos are posted to Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
The YouTube channel has more than 1.5 million followers. The TikTok channel has more than three million.
Players wear POV cameras throughout the tournament. Some of them are mic’d up. Multiple cameras follow them around the bases, on the field and in the dugout. It’s all about content!
The disrespectful bat flip heard around the world.
Pottstown Scout Team plays at many of the major tournaments on the highest level of competition. Rosters are not permanent. Players get invited for specific events. They are encouraged to have fun.
Pottstown is “focused on bringing the top players to create some of the coolest baseball content while competing at a high level and having fun doing it. From high-energy tournaments to creative challenges, everything we do is built around entertainment and passion for the game.”
As you could imagine, the content-focused antics often ruffle feathers. Critics question whether this kind of behavior should be tolerated, let alone promoted. Take this past weekend for example.
Pottstown played its biggest “rival” at the 12U Perfect Game East Classic.
They ended up meeting again in the semifinal. I think? These kids look way bigger than 12, so I might be mistaken. Either way, whatever the age, it was Pottstown versus DSARM.
Pottstown hit five home runs during the game. Its celebrations were theatrical, to say the least.
The second bat flip sparked a much larger dialogue on social media. Check it out:
12-year MLB veteran Doug Mientkiewicz thinks “the wrong people coaching and parenting-these are usually the ones who cause the issues in programs also.” Those who agree question why the youth baseball player was not ejected from the contest for his bat flip. Others think he is an old man yelling at a cloud. They don’t see any problem with the bat flip because it is a children’s game at the end of the day.
Where do you stand? Let me know at Grayson@brobible.com