Bryce Harper<\/a><\/strong> made famous during his amateur ascension.\u00a0 Players in this circuit have allegiance to no one and have practically no concept of what \u201cteam\u201d constitutes.\u00a0 They immediately hit the road following the end of the school season in pursuit of BP rounds and 60-yard dashes.\u00a0 The showcase circuit is a joke to fans of baseball because it effectively strips the game of any intrinsic meaning or value in favor of dollars and exposure.<\/p>\nThe CMWS is somewhat of a throwback relative to the national showcase circuit in that it actually fields teams of players who have spent a minimum of a couple of months together, and in some cases years to a decade together.\u00a0 This in many ways is analogous to school ball except for that the talent level tends to be considerably higher.\u00a0 The thought of a school team succeeding in an event like the CMWS is laughable, but the idea that \u201cteam\u201d matters is certainly a reflection of the school baseball concept.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t to discredit players who outside of school baseball have no means of exposure during the non-spring months other than showcases.\u00a0 This is common in rural areas, inner cities, and areas like Wyoming and Iowa where club baseball options are limited or nonexistent because the school season takes place during the summer months.\u00a0 Brandon Nimmo<\/strong> is a product of that sort of environment, and he landed in the first round and now has a chance to really learn what team baseball means within the professional ranks.<\/p>\nThe Area Code Games have much more in common with a basic showcase than they do with something like the CMWS.\u00a0 Teams are assembled in glorified random fashion based loosely on geography.\u00a0 Yes, the talent level is through the roof.\u00a0 A great deal of the top NCAA recruits as well as the early portion of any draft will have experience in Area Code, but the same can be said for many events including the CMWS.\u00a0 The PG All-American game (formerly Aflac) is held the Sunday after Area Codes and the CMWS and has many players from both rostered.\u00a0 It\u2019s always sort of an end-of-the-summer shindig bringing together the best players from the CMWS and Area Codes into one facility for a handful of high profile innings.\u00a0 Aside from a select few Midland and 18U Team USA rosters, the PG\/Aflac rosters are the best assembled annually.\u00a0 This year is no different, but once again, there is zero team concept involved and the sample size tends to be so small and meaningless that talent evaluators have less to go by than what they would find at an event like the CMWS where players actually give a shit what the score is.<\/p>\n
The difference between events like Area Code and the CMWS as well as the PG\/Aflac All-American Game is that the fans in the CMWS root for the players, but they also root for the teams.\u00a0 At events like Area Codes and other showcase-style recruiting events, the name on the front of any player\u2019s jersey is of little concern to anyone either on the field or in the stands, and the score on the scoreboard is worth far less than each player\u2019s box score line.\u00a0 Perhaps the perfect example is Strike Zone Cardinal Damion Lovato<\/strong>\u2019s final at-bat in the CMWS, which took place in the 8th<\/sup> inning Monday night against the South Troy Dodgers.\u00a0\u00a0 Damion hit a triple after breaking his hamate bone on a foul ball earlier in the game.\u00a0 Something tells me that any player at Area Codes would have probably sat the at-bat out, but the Cards needed him to contribute, and so he gave his team the best he had.\u00a0 I, as a baseball fan, greatly prefer the Connie Mack World Series and selfless performances like Lovato\u2019s to any showcase-style event like the Area Code Games.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Twitter this morning, Oakland pitcher and former CMWS (2005 and 2006) and Area Code Games (2004) participant, Brett Anderson, asked ESPN\u2019s Keith Law if he\u2019d ever been to Farmington in August for the Connie Mack World Series.\u00a0 Law said that he had not due to the simultaneous annual scheduling of the CMWS and Area […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,15,1300,8,6,9,13,10,14],"tags":[2570,2508,2572,26,609,668,48,667,2571,634,2507,606],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4528"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4528"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4530,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4528\/revisions\/4530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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