They started it because the alternatives were a mess
The MSL was founded when a few determined individuals decided they had had enough of playing in un-organised men's adult baseball leagues. It launched in May 1998 with twenty teams — top notch fields, low team fees and outstanding league features — grew to thirty and a third playing level the following year, and is now in its 29th season with 46-plus clubs across five divisions. It describes itself as the largest men's amateur baseball league in the United States.
It is also honest about what growth cost: the league suffered growing pains in its eighteenth season and had to create an Advisory Committee to carry the increasing workload of running an operation that size. That is a rare admission. High Cheese gives a league one address it owns carrying five divisions' fixtures, tables and rosters, so the administrative load that forced a committee is absorbed by the page rather than by volunteers.
Midwest Suburban League in detail
- Twenty-two weekend games per club, across five divisions and forty-six teams.
- A separate archived page for nearly every season from 2000 to 2021.
- Twenty years of standings; no individual result published.
- Forty-six-plus clubs, and five named as national title holders.
- MVP, Gold Glove, Cy Young and home run awards, in every one of five divisions.
- A Batavia PO box, a direct number, and a league hotline.
- A player pool to help team rosters, and a Director of Player Personnel to run it.
- College, minor league and community parks — grass infields, dugouts, fences, mostly lights.
- Five levels sorted by ability, not age — all of them wood bat.
- The league's own story, told once and left as its front page.
- Suites, rings, jackets and a professional ballpark — none of it shown.
- A stadium partnership doing the work a sponsor page would.
- Championship series in a professional stadium, rings for the winners, jackets for the runners-up.
- Champions from 1998 onward, and standings archived year by year back to 2000.
- Larry Kolcz as President, Eric Page on player personnel, and an Advisory Committee behind them.
- What standard, what format and what you get are answered in detail. The fee is not.
- Fully insured games, and an award-winning website of its own account.
- A 22-game weekend schedule, plus a weeknight division for men who want Saturdays back.
- Rings, hats and jackets are won rather than sold.
- Every game fully umpired, and not one official named.
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