Baseball is a lot like Baskin-Robbins. You want as large a sample size as possible.
It's for that reason that two of the game's most important stats involve the word "average." It's true that a large volume of pitches, at-bats and innings are useful to make sense of the terms batting average and earned run average, but at the high school level and below, the need for a large sample size goes well beyond that.
Enter the Russellville Outlaws.
Since 2010, the Outlaws, a non-profit United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA) baseball organization, have given area youth baseball players a chance to not just increase the number of plate appearances they get per summer, but it's given the athletes a chance to do so against some of the top competition in Missouri - and beyond.
Russellville's Michael Miller has been head of the organization since 2007, even before the team was named the Outlaws. Since then, he has had his sons come through the program and experience the benefits of playing on a competitive youth travel baseball team.
"My son, who's 24 now, when he was 14 in recreational league and he played 10 games and had 10 at-bats," Miller said. "The very next year, we put him in a competitive league, he played 10 games, but the difference was he had 54 at-bats.
"That's what created the lightbulb that said there's more out there. My 15-year-old, last year, he probably played 90 games over the summer."
The jump from 10 at-bats to 90 games is exponentially beneficial for a youth baseball player. However, when organizations like USSSA or Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) are put up against recreational leagues in comparisons, oftentimes the competitive club programs get targeted.
While it's true that things like burnout can happen to players and rec league numbers can decrease, those are case by case examples. Typically, the conversations overlook the broader spectrum of the skills and life lessons that are further developed on a team like the Outlaws.
"There's semi-competitive, competitive and crazy-competitive and we're somewhere in the middle," Miller said. "We've gone as far as Indiana to play baseball, but we don't go state-to-state, we've done that just the one time. We play as many local games as we can and we don't go any further than St. Louis or Kansas City or Branson to go play.
"The impact is that it takes those better players out of recreation, but then it really does turn it into recreation, which should just be for fun."
While the skill development is an individual benefit for each athlete, there are also group benefits to giving a player an added two to three months of baseball experience per year. Outside of Russellville, the Outlaws draw kids from California, Mokane, Columbia, St. Elizabeth, Stover and other areas of Mid-Missouri.
Not only do high school coaches benefit from getting more advanced freshmen into their programs, but the kids themselves benefit from building friendships with each other over the course of multiple seasons.
"It's a chance to get along with kids you would've never known otherwise," Miller said. "You may have never met that kid from out of town, but now that you've played baseball with him for five years, you've found a way to coexist.
"You can carry that over into life, and say if I commit, work hard and set a goal for something, I can accomplish it with no matter who I have around. That's just what we hope to do in our daily lives."
Between ages 9u all the way up to 15u, the Russellville Outlaws have had has many as six teams at a time since its inception, one of which was ranked No. 1 in Missouri's USSSA power rankings as recently as last year. Currently, the program fields just two teams (9u and 15u), and Miller's plan is to take a step back with his third-oldest son now fully into high school baseball for the Russellville Indians.
"I'll always have this group of boys," he said. "I have such a good group that I'll take them for as long as they want to go play."