Competitive Travel Baseball

We’d be happy to have him in for a free evaluation - and it would be best to do it during that team’s practice so that you and your son can meet the coaches and other players, and also get a great sense of the level of play along with the coaching and playing experience in our travel program.  We like to ensure that every player is placed in the right situation to maximize their own development and the development of the players around them.

Level of competition and in-game instruction & development.  Our Club League is a developmental program that maintains a very healthy level of competition, while our Travel Teams are extremely selective in their rosters and play a more advanced level of competition.  Roughly 5% of our players qualify for travel baseball.  Our Club League is far more advanced than most, as it’s trained and coached by our full coaching staff, and games are preceded by one of a series of structured lessons for the players - and with coaches on the field throughout the game, players are learning as they go.  We take advantage of teaching moments throughout every game to instruct individual players and sometimes both teams at once with a stop in play. 

We don’t have a sibling or any other discounts.  We want everyone in our program to know that our integrity is paramount, and that no family pays a different price for anything that we do.  We do have a generous financial aid program for families in need, as we would never allow money to get in the way of a player that wants to be in our program!

No, all of New York Empire Baseball’s coaches are independent of the parents. Our parents are encouraged to support their child’s efforts on and off the field, but not to provide instruction or coaching during the games.

For our Club League we seek to place every player in the right place for their own development, so if they’re on the cusp of an age group, we’re happy to place them up or down to ensure a great experience for them and the players around them.

For Travel Baseball, we defer to the leagues and tournaments in which we play, most of whom still use a May 1 age cutoff - that is (for example) a player in “10U” cannot turn 11 in that calendar year prior to May 1.  Players remain in that age group for the duration of the calendar year.

We’re known for our instruction – and every program is tailored to the skill level of the players – and we break down every program further by age & skill to ensure an individualized learning experience – we’re here to teach & inspire players, and we have a very interactive experience in our training programs and in our Club League games.

We are based in our own two-floor 5,000 square foot training facility, The Arena, at 251 West 60 Street between West End Avenue & Amsterdam Avenue.  Weather permitting, our after school programs are in Central Park, and our teams play at a variety of fields in Manhattan, including Central Park, Jefferson park (1st/112th), Wagner Field (2nd/120th), DeWitt Clinton (11th/54th) and sometimes on Randall’s Island.  We’re excited to have field permits from the Parks Department for all of our programs, as they aren’t easy to come by!  

Our travel teams also travel to other organizations’ fields throughout Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau.  We also attend tournaments in Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland.

We have a variety of training options from our after school programs to training classes and private or small group lessons.  To learn and focus on individual skill development, lessons are a great start, but the group environment will not only work on those skills, but also do it in a peer group so that players learn together and also learn game situations.

That’s terrific - we like to ask that players approach the coaches with their requests so that we can help the players to take responsibility for their own development.  As for certain positions, like Pitcher, First Base and Catcher, there are specific skills that need to be learned prior to playing those positions, and we should address that in training - we’re happy to have a player in (at no charge) anytime to evaluate them for a particular position.

Contrary to popular belief, bigger isn’t better, and for young players, won’t help them to “catch more balls.”  Making it even more complicated is that the size in inches doesn’t tell the whole story - as important as the quoted size is the size of the “hand stall” into which your son’s hand will fit.  If the stall is too big, the glove will be falling off of your son’s hand and will be difficult to close when/how he wants to.  We’ve carefully curated an entire selection of gloves from Wilson, Rawlings, Easton and Vinci to fit virtually every player and skill level!