I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you’re in the travelball community, then odds are you have personally victimized a mom or dad who had the unenviable task of operating GameChanger.  This message is for you. 

What is GameChanger?

For those who have been living under a rock, I’m here to inform you that we no longer use scorebooks to track stats in baseball.  That’s been replaced by an app, and this app is called GameChanger.  How important is this app?  How do I put this…

It’s the air that travelball parents breathe. 

GameChanger allows you to watch little league games live on a platform that tracks every pitch, every at bat, every play in the field – everything.  You can watch from home, the car, from work – heck many parents watch their kids play baseball on GameChanger while they watch their kid play baseball. With a strategically placed cell phone behind home plate, a team can livestream the game. A (perhaps) unintended consequence is that everyone viewing from afar can hear every word of trash talk from opposing fans. It’s glorious.

With GameChanger, not only can you track your own team’s games, you can legit stalk any baseball player, anywhere.  Indeed, the app allows you to view spray charts of future opponents and peek at the batting averages of everyone on a former team. GameChanger will have you actively cheering on some random team you’ve never heard of in the latter part of pool play in hopes of avoiding the dreaded 8am game the next morning.  THESE GAMES MATTER!

How To Become the GameChanger Operator:

Each team has a mom or dad or older brother or random uncle who manages the entire operation. How does one get this responsibility?  Well, typically the head coach will reach out to the team’s group thread a few days before the first game of the season and ask: “is anyone willing to do GameChanger this weekend?”  Don’t be fooled, though. By “this weekend” what the coach means is “literally every single game for the next five months.”  In travelball, that’s basically forever. 

With all that responsibility you’d think people would be deterred but it turns out some parents actually want to do this.  Why? The simple answer is: power.  See, many people think the head coach is a position of power.  As I have previously discussed, that’s not exactly the case.  But the ability to transform your child’s weak ground ball to second base from a “reached on error” to a “hit?” Well that, my friends, is power. 

Like head coaching, operating GameChanger is not a task that most would outright admit they “want” to do.  Typically, someone will volunteer for the job by both demonstrating they have the requisite baseball knowledge, while also making it clear that they are *not* excited about the job.  So when the coach seeks a volunteer for GameChanger, you wont see anyone say “YES! I’D LIKE TO DO IT!” You’ve gotta play it cooler than that. You may see an answer like: “I can do GameChanger, or if someone else wants to do it I can teach them.” 

The Pros of Doing GameChanger:

As far as I can tell, the perks to doing Gamechanger are as follows:

1. You decide who has access to the team’s GameChanger (i.e. you help shape who gets to stalk the team);  
2. You decide if a ball in play is a hit or an error (obviously the biggest one); and
3. You get the lineup about five minutes before the other parents on the team

That’s it.  That’s literally all of the perks. 

The Pitfalls of Doing GameChanger:

Here goes.

1. You can’t browse TikTok while your kid plays baseball;
2. You cant miss any games for any reason;
3. If your kid is not in the lineup, you don’t get to storm off to your car and pout about “politics”;
4. Everyone questions the accuracy of your own kids’ stats; and  
5. Assigning an error to a kid for any reason will make their parents hate you.

I’ve had this assignment and can assure you that when doing GameChanger, you experience baseball differently.  For instance, if a ground ball sails through a fielder’s legs, you may hear his dad yell “TOUGH HOP, JOHNNY, NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!” Of course, that parent isn’t talking to Johnny.  Oh, no. 

He’s talking to you.

If your assumption is that Travelball parents aren’t this petty, I assure you they are. Stats are the social currency of travelball parents, and many lose their ever-loving minds over what gets put into this app.  The following exchange unfolded last month on one of our team group threads:

You see, many Travelball parents are convinced that the coaches – who hit literally thousands of fly balls to each of these kids in practice and before games – base 100% of their playing time decisions off of the stats they see in GameChanger.  The GameChanger operator becomes an easy target when those stats don’t look so good. 

Do you have what it takes to do GameChanger?

Operating GameChanger is not for the feint of heart.  Whoever takes this role must be willing to endure a season full of passive-aggressive commentary from the masses, and at least a few run-ins with a mansplaining dad who played JV baseball 20 years ago and knows everything about scoring the game. 

Me? I don’t have what it takes. Travelball parents are so mean. Also, I’m an extravert who enjoys some good gossip and dancing to walk-up music. This becomes a problem when the game picks up and you’ve been side-tracked.  Next thing you know there’s a mysterious player on second base and you have the wrong kid at bat.  That’s when you know you’re in trouble. 

True story: a few weeks back I was doing GameChanger and lost track of things.  I assigned the other team too many runs and couldn’t fix the problem.  How did I get here? I was talking, and it all happened so fast. There isn’t exactly a helpdesk for these situations, so we GameChanging amateurs must improvise. I ended up giving the other team negative one run in the final inning because, for the life of me, I could not figure this out.  That’s when I knew it was time to retire from GameChanger. Forever.

Coaches can’t do GameChanger.  The head coach runs third base, an assistant coach holds down first base, and then there’s usually a third coach in charge of babysitting from the dugout and periodically imploring the team to “make some noise.”  They’re all important responsibilities, and we men generally cannot multi-task. You gotta look elsewhere.

Here’s my hot take: the ideal candidate for the GameChanger gig is a mom, and preferably one that has three or more kids.  There, I said it. You’re looking for that mom who is tough as nails and doesn’t care what anyone thinks, and if anyone dares question her methods, she’ll immediately fire back with “WELL IF YOU KNOW EVERYTHING WHY DONT *YOU* JUST DO GAMECHANGER.”

That’s the one you want. 

My wife?  She’s been doing GameChanger for years. She’s a multi-tasking legend – capable of doing GameChanger while also doing the walk-up songs and keeping up with all of her “cool mom” baseball text threads. It’s insane.

While many amateur GameChanger operators are inclined to give the kids the benefit of the doubt, my wife is ruthless when assigning errors.  This important skill doesn’t exactly win her any popularity contests, but who are we kidding? We’re travelball parents. We don’t really have time for friends anyway.

Not everyone is as calloused as my wife, however.  Which brings me back to my original point…

Doing GameChanger is harder than it looks. We, as a community of travelball parents, must support our brave GameChanger moms and dads with the unenviable task of documenting every play of every game.  It’s an important and thankless job that will yield lots of drama and complaints, and zero friends.

Frankly, I don’t have what it takes. But I fully support those poor souls who take this responsibility head on.

For those who can stand the heat, there is an upside: the ability to convert your own child’s routine pop fly to third base – that got dropped – into a heroic line drive single. 

Now that, my friends, is power.