Sorted by how good you are, and how much you can commit
The MSL splits by standard rather than decade, and explains each one. National League: wood bat, for experienced teams and players who want wood. American League: wood bat, for experienced ex-high school and college players with some league experience and additional pitching depth. Central League: wood bat, for newly formed teams with high school or comparable experience. Federal League: wood bat, and a weeknight competition specifically for men who want their weekends off. A Korean League was added as an instructional level.
Adding a whole division for players who cannot give up a Saturday is a structural answer to the real reason men stop playing, and pitching depth as the distinguishing feature between the top two levels is exactly right. All games are nine innings, seven for doubleheaders, fully umpired and fully insured. High Cheese keeps a league's rules beside its schedule and against its rosters, so five levels with five different standards are legible to a man deciding which one he belongs in.
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.
- 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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