Three good posts and a goodbye
The news runs backwards from September 2024: the First and Second All-League Teams announced with a note pointing at an archive going back to 2012, then the Cy Young write-up, then the MVP write-up — each a proper piece of baseball writing with the numbers, the moments and the beaten candidates named.
Above all three sits the notice that the league is no longer running. That ordering is the whole story: a league doing its best work in its final month. A league on High Cheese gets a wire on its own page where finals post themselves as the books are finalized, so a writer this good spends his time on the writing.
Liberty Bell Men's Baseball League in detail
- A Philadelphia league that has closed — and left the door open for its players.
- Sixteen seasons of fixtures, ending in August 2024.
- Dirt Dawgs 21-2 in the last season, Quaker City Comets 1-20.
- Results to the last week of the last season, including games against Bux-Mont clubs.
- Dirt Dawgs, Conshy Marlins, Philadelphia Red Sox, Padres, Lions and Quaker City Comets.
- A Cy Young write-up with ERA, WHIP, strikeout rate and a three-game championship series.
- A commissioner emeritus, an address on Passyunk Ave., and an email for referrals.
- The league has closed; the free agent form is still open, pointing elsewhere.
- An address on Passyunk Ave., and no ballpark named.
- No rulebook is published.
- Award posts built around images that no longer render.
- Nobody is thanked in public.
- A three-game final in 2024, and the Marlins beat the 21-2 top seed to repeat.
- Twelve seasons on file, 2013 to 2024, with post-seasons kept separately.
- One name, one title: Commissioner Emeritus.
- The only current answer is where to go instead.
- An All-League Teams archive back to 2012, still being assembled when the league closed.
- Summers ending in early August, with a post-season after.
- Nothing is for sale.
- No crew or assignor is named.
Compare