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of a mound and twirled pitch after gorgeous pitch. Harley’s motion was a study in biomechanical beauty, his legs driving efficiently, his hips swiveling at just the right time, his non-throwing arm tugging down and pulling through his torso, and his right arm unfurling so smoothly it looked machine-taught. His peers chucked the ball; Harley delivered it.
    He came here in March 2015 from San Diego with a traveling baseball team called the Show, which recruited some of the best ten-and-under kids in Southern California to compete in high-level tournaments like this one, the Spring Championship Super NIT in Gilbert, Arizona. Hundreds of other teams in all age groups, some as young as seven years old, came from around the country to feed the excesses of American youth baseball personified by the Big League Dreams complex. Built near a farm, it reeked ofcow dung. Local politicians still kick themselves for spending more than $40 million to develop the campus for the private company that runs ten more such facilities across the West Coast.
    Four fields, each built in the scaled-down image of a famous major league stadium, surrounded a central hub of video games, flat-screen TVs, bad food, and, most important, copious beer. The taps started flowing around eight a.m., when some fathers lubed themselves to forget they’d been conned into traveling hundreds of miles for games that just as easily could’ve taken place ten minutes from their houses. The youth baseball–industrial complex can hypnotize even the most mindful.
    Nicola and Martin Harrington never expected to find themselves in a facility like this. Nicola once was a pop star in England whose band, the Simon Cowell–backed Girl Thing, fizzled amid great hype. Much of the drama involved Nicola’s secret relationship with Martin, a music producer. They married, had Harley, left England, and ended up in Los Angeles, where a friend of Martin’s told him that now that his boy was American, he needed a baseball glove. Harley fell in love with the game and showed enough aptitude that he craved better competition.
    All Martin knew about the United States’ travel-sports industry—whose estimated revenues now range from $7 billion to far more—was that it seemed crazy. Not just the cost of hotels or the time away from work, all so a kid could play at a novelty stadium or win a cheap championship ring, but the children on other teams who cowered in fear of criticism from their parents.
    Three former number one overall picks in Major League Baseball’s draft had played for the Show: National League MVP outfielder Bryce Harper and two pitchers, Stephen Strasburg and Brady Aiken, both of whom bear scars on their elbows. While Harley started as an outfielder, his coaches quickly recognized the fluidity with which he threw a ball. Pitchers spend a lifetime trying to look as natural pitching as Harley did the first time he stepped on a mound.
    â€œHaving been around some really good players in our program, sometimes we single out kids who remind us of others,” said Hector Lorenzana, one of the Show’s longtime coaches. “We had the privilege of having Bryce Harper since he was eight and a half, nine years old. We see flashes in things kids do at certain ages. And it reminds you of other players who have come through. Harley is one of those.”
    At the Spring Championship Super NIT, whose champion qualifies for an even bigger tournament later in the year at Disney World, the Show ran roughshod through its bracket to reach the semifinals, where it unleashed Harley. He mixed fastballs and off-speed offerings, all from the same release point, each pitch faster and crisper than his peers’. Harley exited in the fourth inning after fifty-two pitches, well short of the tournament limit of eight innings with no maximum pitch count. Martin always kept track of how many Harley had thrown, and when the Show squeaked out a victory to get