The list is real, and it is rationed
Joining starts with the free agent sign-up form, and the league says it will get back to you as soon as it can. Behind that is an actual maintained list: the league keeps every free agent who submits their information on the site, and it decides which managers get access to it based on what teams currently need. Managers use it to fill rosters, and a free agent can sign with any team at any point in the season as long as he is eligible.
Eligibility is four things -- 18 before the first game, completed online registration, an agreed liability waiver, and paid fees -- plus one clause no other league in this directory carries: a player must be legally able to enter city parks and school campuses in Nebraska and Iowa. The league may ask for photo identification, and any manager may challenge any player's eligibility at any time. Playing an ineligible man costs him the season and can cost a knowing manager this season and the next one entire.
There is no minimum or maximum roster size, which for a twelve-team league is unusual and generous.
Rationing access to a free agent list is a league doing placement by hand, one manager at a time. A High Cheese free agent pool sits at the league's own address with the rosters it feeds, so the man who signed up in March is visible to the team that is short in July.
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.
- Games are on city parks and school grounds across the metro, with a 500-foot exclusion zone around them.
- 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.
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