Five hundred feet
The league names no ballpark. What it tells you about its grounds comes out of the rulebook: it plays on city parks and school campuses across the Omaha metro and into Iowa, tightly enough that eligibility to enter those premises is written into the player rules.
Its zero-tolerance policy is drawn in distance rather than in principle -- no alcohol, tobacco or illegal drugs within five hundred feet of any playing field or the city park containing it, applying to players, umpires, officials and spectators alike, with immediate suspension and removal from the premises for anyone who breaks it. A league on borrowed public ground protects the loan.
A player still has to find the field. A High Cheese schedule attaches the ground to the game, which is the one piece of information a league on eleven or twelve public diamonds cannot afford to leave out.
Omaha Adult Baseball League in detail
- Simple. Honest. Baseball. Twelve teams, fifteen games and two paid umpires a game, in wood bats only.
- Fifteen games from late April to early September, filterable by team.
- Twelve teams seeding a single-elimination tournament, with no table on the public site.
- Box scores are required for entry on the website, and keeping no book costs a team its right to appeal.
- No roster limits at all, everyone present bats, and a short team borrows into the outfield.
- Full scorebooks are kept by both teams and no player's numbers reach the public.
- One free agent form and a login; no name, email or phone is published.
- A free agent sign-up form, and a free agent list managers get access to when their teams need it.
- A 2020 rulebook that legislates courtesy runners, decoy tags and who keeps the leftover baseballs.
- No news page or announcements are published.
- No gallery is published.
- Sponsor logos are permitted on jerseys; no sponsor is named.
- Single elimination with a two-game guarantee, played in full with no time limit.
- Started in Lincoln in 1999 as the Nebraska Adult Baseball Association, and moved up the interstate in 2004.
- A board exists, hears protests and appeals, and is not named anywhere.
- What happens to your fees, what you have to wear, and what the league does about a ball that will not stop.
- A 2020 rulebook in seven indexed sections, plus a liability agreement every player signs.
- The season is dated only as late April to early September.
- Three and a half dozen game balls per team, and the winners take the larger share of what is left.
- Two paid umpires at every game, with sole discretion to eject and a review process behind them.