Indiana Baseball Leagues

Hoosier Adult Baseball operates in Indianapolis alongside the Indiana Baseball League's staggered six-division operation, which makes it the second adult baseball listing in the same city.

Indiana is a basketball state in the popular telling, and that telling has always undersold the baseball. The state produces a steady stream of professional players and supports leagues in Indianapolis, Terre Haute and up in the northwest corner near Chicago.

We could not extract usable detail from the site. If you run this one, the useful thing to send is what distinguishes it from the Indiana Baseball League, because a player in Indianapolis choosing between two leagues wants to know exactly that.

The Indiana Baseball League runs out of Carmel with six brackets: 18+, 25+, 35+, 45+, 55+ and a division listed as HTA. What makes it unusual is that they do not all start together. The 18+ and 25+ divisions open April 12, the 45+ on June 1, the 35+ on June 3, HTA on July 12, and the 55+ not until August 6.

Staggering the start dates by four months is a genuinely clever piece of scheduling. Field availability in central Indiana is fiercely contested in spring by high school and travel ball, and an older division that waits until August is playing when the diamonds are free and the weather has stopped being a coin toss. It also means a player could reasonably appear in more than one division across a year.

There is a Labor Day tournament and a partnership with a performance rehabilitation provider, which is the most honest amenity an adult baseball league has ever advertised. Mike Shadoan is president. [email protected].

South Shore Adult Baseball runs out of Hammond in the northwest corner of Indiana, and its address is nwinaba.com, which unpacks as Northwest Indiana NABA.

That corner of the state is functionally part of Chicago. Hammond is twenty miles from the Loop, closer to downtown Chicago than most of the suburbs whose leagues we list under Illinois, and a player there is choosing between this and half a dozen options across the state line.

Which makes the case for a local league obvious: the state line is also a toll road, and a Sunday game you can drive to in fifteen minutes beats one that costs you an hour each way. Send us the divisions and season.

Terre Haute MSBL has been going since 1991. Terre Haute is a city of sixty thousand on the Wabash, and a league that has lasted thirty-five years there has done so without the population cushion that Indianapolis or Chicago leagues enjoy.

Small-city leagues run on a different arithmetic. Lose four players to relocation in one winter and a division is in trouble; lose a manager and a team can simply cease to exist. Thirty-five years means somebody has repeatedly solved that problem, quietly, every February, for three and a half decades.

We were not able to read the site. Send us the divisions and the fields and this becomes a proper entry.