Three brothers. Three draft calls. One house.
My name is Kevin Bass. In 1998, the Chicago Cubs called my name in the third round of the MLB Draft. Four years earlier, the Braves had drafted my older brother in the ninth. Three years later, the Orioles took my younger brother in the first.
Three boys, one backyard, three professional signatures. I'm the one in the middle — and that seat turned out to be the best education in baseball anyone could get.
The middle seat
I watched my older brother go through the youth baseball machine first, when my parents were figuring it out as they went. Then I lived it myself. Then I watched my younger brother come through behind me, after the family had learned what mattered and quietly stopped paying for what didn't.
I'll tell you something most people in this business won't: we didn't do everything right. We wasted money. We wasted weekends. We chased things that didn't matter and nearly missed a few that did. Three draft picks doesn't mean my parents had a secret formula — it means our family ran the experiment three times, made different mistakes each time, and learned what actually moves the needle.
From the batter's box to the fence
After my playing career, I moved to the other side of the fence — coaching hitters at the high school and college level. That's where I saw it clearly: the gap between what gets sold to baseball and softball families and what actually develops players is wide enough to drive a team bus through.
Almost everyone selling something to a youth sports parent gets paid whether or not the kid gets better. The bat company gets paid when you buy the bat — not when your kid squares one up. That's not a conspiracy; it's just incentives. But nobody hands families a map that says so.
Why Coach Bass exists
Everything on this site runs on one rule: no hype. The coaching tools are built from real practice plans. The Bass 100 ranks players on verified, in-person numbers — never pay-for-placement. And when I evaluate your player, I'll tell you what I actually see, including when the answer is "save your money."
I've been the kid the checks were written for, the brother watching it happen twice more, and the coach who knows which of those checks mattered. That's the whole story — and it's why you can trust the numbers around here.
— Coach Kevin Bass