Money ball: The truth about baseball scholarships

Cam Climo (Billerica, Mass.) walked on at UMass Lowell but was All-Conference as a freshman. (Bill Ziskin/UMass Lowell Athletics)

Baseball is a sport, the old adage goes, that sees a player’s value measured to the third decimal place.

But for many young players looking to continue their careers at a Division 1 or Division 2 college, there are other decimals that matter more.

Scholarships mean different things to different groups. To families, it’s a way to reduce the often eye-popping cost of a college education. To players, it’s a badge of honor that can immediately be rolled into a social media post or bumper sticker for the car.

And for college coaches, the men who dole out these precious scholarships, knowing they’ll never have as many as they want, they’re building blocks that must be chosen and placed correctly, or else the structure will crumble.