Twenty-nine seasons, most of them on file
The league names its champions from the beginning: Palatine Orioles and the Rangers in 1998, Astros, Chicago Rebels and Chicago Reds in 1999, Fox Valley Bulldogs and the Reds again in 2000. Behind that sits a standings archive with its own page for almost every year from 2000 to 2021 — a run of nearly two decades, with a handful of years missing.
It also records what it has produced: four national title holders are named as MSL clubs, alongside a fifth. Twenty-nine seasons of a 46-club league is the deepest archive in this directory after a couple of outliers, and it is spread across twenty separate hand-built pages in three different file formats. Every season played on High Cheese keeps itself as standings, box scores and rosters together on one address, so an archive stops depending on whoever last knew how to add a page.
Midwest Suburban League in detail
- Founded 1998 by men fed up with disorganised leagues; now 46-plus teams across five levels.
- 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.
- 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.
Compare