What you turn up with
The league is wood bat only and open to players aged 17 and older. Its equipment requirement is set out item by item: wood bats, a batting helmet, a fielding glove or catcher's mitt, catcher's gear where applicable, baseball pants in white or grey, and cleats — metal, rubber or plastic all permitted.
Specifying the pants colour is the kind of detail that only appears after somebody has turned up in navy, and allowing all three cleat types is a league that plays on a variety of surfaces. No further rulebook, roster limit or pitching restriction is published. High Cheese keeps a league's rules beside its schedule, so what differs between a AAA Friday game and a Sunday recreation game is readable by the men in both.
Houston Baseball Association in detail
- A thousand players a year, wood bats, professional umpires and seven separate leagues.
- Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, spring and fall — and not one fixture.
- Championships are awarded in all seven competitions; no table is published.
- Every game is filmed and scored; no result is published.
- A thousand players a year, and not one club named.
- Ten years of player career statistics, kept MLB-style and shown to nobody.
- Ask Adam — founder Adam Berge, a calendar booking link, and Phone: PLEASE EMAIL.
- Open tryouts, and if there are none, the president will arrange one for you.
- Access to some of the best fields available to adult baseball — none of them named.
- No news or announcements are published.
- More than 2,100 games live-streamed, with a social account per competition.
- Nobody is named, on a platform streaming 2,100 games.
- League play and tournaments both, with championship and MVP awards at the end.
- Over ten years of career statistics implies over ten years of league.
- Adam Berge, founder — and a league president referred to but not named.
- Who and what standard are answered thoroughly. Where, when and how much are not.
- A privacy policy, and nothing else.
- Spring and fall, every one of the seven competitions, on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
- Every player supplies his own; nothing is sold.
- Professional umpires, listed second among the reasons to join.
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