Four levels, no rulebook
The structural rule is the division ladder: A, AA, AAA and Majors, with A through AAA playing the fall season and Majors running most of the year. The league says its matchups are competitive enough to bring out the best in every player, which is the ladder doing its job.
Beyond that nothing is published -- no bat rule, roster limit, game length, courtesy runner or pitching restriction appears anywhere on the public site, in a league that fields four separate standards of play.
A player choosing between AA and AAA has nothing to read that would help him choose. A High Cheese league page keeps the rules and the division descriptions beside the schedule, at the league's own address, which is where the man deciding where he fits is already looking.
Pacific Coast Baseball League in detail
- A nonprofit adult league across LA County, on fields with real mounds, grass infields, fences and dugouts.
- Season windows are published; no fixture list is.
- Playoff seeds are published in the finals; the tables behind them are not.
- The only scores published are the finals, and they go back four years.
- Twenty-odd clubs across four levels, named in the finals if nowhere else.
- Full stats online is one of three things the league sells itself on.
- One league address, [email protected], and no named officer.
- Register in the Player Pool, then take a tryout or get picked up mid-season.
- High school and college fields across LA County, with El Cariso Park the one named ground.
- Announcements are the tryout banner and the champions archive.
- Every championship on the archive has a photo album attached.
- No sponsor is named.
- Majors finals are a series; the lower divisions settle it in one game.
- Four years of finals on the record, and one club that has won almost all the big ones.
- Nobody is named.
- Ages, levels, seasons and tryout dates are answered; cost and location are not.
- No rulebook, waiver or bylaws are published.
- Fall from 30 August to 22 November, and a Majors season running February to October.
- Nothing is for sale.
- Two umpires at every game, named as a selling point.
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