Larry Wiggins, 1989
MSBL was founded nationally in 1988. A year later Larry Wiggins brought it to Houston as a 30-and-older league — the Houston Men's Senior Baseball League — with five teams playing at Memorial Ashford Little League. The response, in the league's own words, was immediate and overwhelming: by the early 2000s it had swelled to nearly forty teams across 18+, 30+ and 40+ age groups, each split into A and B competitive levels. It has since settled at twenty-five to thirty clubs, through consolidation and a more mature structure, with many of Wiggins's original formats still intact.
The page is also good on what came before: company-sponsored teams were a fixture of mid-century Houston, rosters built on talent with no regard for age, and what 1988 actually invented was the age-based division — the thing that let a man keep playing rather than age out. Every season played on High Cheese keeps itself as standings, box scores and rosters together, so a league already this careful about its own past stops having to write it from memory.
Houston MSBL/MABL in detail
- Four divisions, two seasons a year, MLB National League rules, and thirty-seven years of it.
- A Schedule – Fall 2026 page with nothing on it.
- A Standings – Fall 2026 page, and a Spring page behind it, both empty.
- Championship finals are reported; nothing else is.
- Stealth, A's, Roughnecks, Cyclones, Royals, Angels and Gamblers — named only when they win.
- Kept on GameChanger for the tournament, and nowhere for the league.
- An office in Spring, a telephone number, and a promise to answer within 24 to 48 hours.
- Come to the next tryouts — and an empty Registration page where the form should be.
- A Field Locations page with no locations, and a league that has built two diamonds.
- MLB National League rules with minor modifications, published as a dated PDF.
- Championship write-ups with the MVP, the score and the manager, season after season.
- An all-star game at Minute Maid Park, and the first expansion team's roster photograph.
- Ten schools, a foundation partnership, and two new fields built at Meyer Park.
- Labor Day weekend, $2,500 a team, locked rosters, and championship rings at the end.
- Larry Wiggins founded it in 1989; nobody is named as running it now.
- Who and what standard are answered in detail. Where, when and how much are not.
- A dated rulebook PDF, and a pointer to SABR for anybody who wants the deeper history.
- Two seasons a year, plus a national tournament circuit posted with dates and divisions.
- Rings and engraved bats for the tournament; nothing for sale.
- No crew or assignor is named.
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