There's most likely nothing I can say about the importance of getting after it in the classroom that your son hasn't heard already from you, but I did come across this interesting statistic last week:

As the chart above shows, no matter how good you are at baseball (or any sport for that matter), the lower your GPA is, the fewer OPTIONS you have.

And really, the biggest reason to get a great education is that it will provide you with OPTIONS as an adult.

From a baseball standpoint, I've sat with college coaches at recruiting camps who get the roster of the players in attendance the night before everything starts, and I've watched them cross off names based simply on GPA.

Literally the first thing they do, before they've seen a single game of catch or batting practice session, is eliminate all the players whose grades just aren't good enough to get into their college.  It doesn't matter if the next Justin Verlander or Bryce Harper is in camp; if the grades aren't there, the rest doesn't matter.

I know that job recruiting works the same way, so whether your son is starting 3rd grade or 11th grade - whether they want to be a big leaguer or a lawyer, I'm hoping they crush it in the classroom so that they've got as many options as possible when they get to the "real world."

Good luck!