Reporter Steve Craig’s well-researched and thoughtful article about the declining participation in Little League baseball in Maine and around the country (“Where have you gone, Little Leaguers?” May 28) saddens me as a lifelong baseball fan – but it hardly surprises me.

With the growing year-round emphasis on every sport and with for-profit travel team options like spring soccer, spring basketball, lacrosse, summer soccer, summer basketball – along with so many kids just preferring to be on screens rather than teams at all – Little League baseball/softball is no longer the traditional rite of passage it once was for so many of us or our kids.

Baseball is still the best and most challenging team sport ever invented – in my biased opinion – and also likely the best for teaching kids how to deal with frustration and failure, but that appeal and the landscape around it have changed greatly over these past many years.

John Heffernan
South Portland