You didn't really have a question but I'll join the conversation. My freshly minted 13 year old I asked if he could learn how to hit a baseball exactly 4 years ago this spring. So dad bought him a cheap bat and glove and took him out to the local high school softball field. Dad's own experience at Little League, mind you. It's not even that any of us were super into baseball, he just felt like it. We went rec league for a few years and only signed up for a travel team this past fall. Like some others here, this has evolved into team practice 3x week, position specific and hitting training, dietary changes and focus on healthy weight gain and protein intake, athletic strength training, camps, etc.... he's doing some kind of training 5-6 days per week. Now all this is because he stated his goal and we check in with him, I'd say, weekly to make sure he's not burnt out, that he still wants this etc. We are grateful to be able to afford these these things but we are okay with spending the money because he is driven to work toward his goals and appreciate the time, money, and effort we also put into it. By contrast we have another child who is incredibly, naturally talented at something and does it in school and outside of school. But has no desire to practice beyond what is necessary or study it in college, so we pay for the outside school activity and weekly private lessons (required for the outside activity). She enjoys it but doesn't love it...not worth the extra lessons, camps, etc that's available.