I’m not sure that I follow completely. So you are saying that most youth league cutoff dates are July 31, making kids born in August the oldest, and kids born in July the youngest of their age group?

That makes sense, since my b-day is at the end of May and I was always one of the younger kids at my age cutoff. Typically, I would play with kids who were in my grade and at most 10-11 months older than me. The biggest age differential in Little League Baseball is 2 years when you reach the 11-12, then 13-14, then 15-16 year old divisions. So at some age divisions I would be 2 years younger than half of the kids, 1 school grade behind, and only a few months younger than the other half of the kids who were in my grade.

That being said, I played in a highly cometitive little league (Citrus Park LL the one that represented Tampa in the LLWS) and never saw a trend where the kids born in August were better than the kids born only a few months later. It never worked out that way in my LL growing up, and I dont see how kids born within 12 months of eachother are effected one bit by what month their b-day falls into growing up. God given talent is what seperates them. ANything more than 12 months and there is defenite physical maturity that can trump natural ability, but I dont know that I buy this age cutoff thing for kids within 12 months of eachother

very interesting to consider though, but if there is any correlation between the month MLB players were born and LL cutoff dates I would initially have to say it is coincedental unless there is more of a history to this correlation. If its something thats been a trend in baseball for 20 years, than I might change my stance.

This is actually something I bring up often and knew I heard it elsewhere. I’m not sure if it was in the book Freakanomics or on the authors’ blog, but a very similar trend was found regarding premier european soccer players. Here’s the quote from NYTimes article.

Since youth sports are organized by age bracket, teams inevitably have a cutoff birth date. In the European youth soccer leagues, the cutoff date is Dec. 31. So when a coach is assessing two players in the same age bracket, one who happened to have been born in January and the other in December, the player born in January is likely to be bigger, stronger, more mature. Guess which player the coach is more likely to pick? He may be mistaking maturity for ability, but he is making his selection nonetheless. And once chosen, those January-born players are the ones who, year after year, receive the training, the deliberate practice and the feedback — to say nothing of the accompanying self-esteem — that will turn them into elites.

It makes a whole lot of sense. Think of when you played little league, the biggest twelve year olds always got the most attention. These were the kids focused on most and I’m sure their parents were more likely to spend a little more money on them since they show such promise. Of course there are more variables, but birth month seems to be a decent sized factor.