Choco Meat Market and Cafe Bustelo
The league's own history records how sponsorship used to work here: many of the teams revolved around restaurants and cafes -- Choco Meat Market, the world-famous Cafe Bustelo -- most of which have long since vanished, though the coffee has not. In more recent years Robinson Cano sponsored a team the league says struck fear into its opponents.
Today the site invites approaches about sponsoring the season and names nobody currently doing it.
A business backing a club in Central Park should be visible on the page players and their friends actually open, which is the schedule. A High Cheese league page puts a sponsor beside the fixture list and the standings, which is where a name like Bustelo earned its sixty years of association in the first place.
Pancho Coimbre Baseball in detail
- Founded in 1959 and still playing in the North Meadow, in what may be the longest continuously running independent amateur league anywhere.
- April to August, weekend doubleheaders, with the fixture list living inside a scoring app.
- Twelve teams, eleven of them alive for seven playoff spots in July.
- Weekend recaps written up game by game, with pitching lines and who drove in what.
- Twelve clubs in the Pancho and Coimbre divisions, from Harlem to Flatbush.
- Official statistics live in GameChanger, and the league fee pays for it.
- A contact form for teams and sponsors, and Instagram for everything about a specific club.
- A free agent pool, an annual draft in January, and different rules depending on the month.
- The North Meadow of Central Park, with occasional games on Randall's Island and in Red Hook.
- American League rules, signed by the managers, enforced on an honour system — with forfeits available anyway.
- The Punch Out podcast, plus season previews and weekend recaps written team by team.
- The league credits its photographers by name.
- Seven teams, a bye for the top seed, and a championship series at a professional ballpark.
- Three commissioners in sixty-seven years, a Caribbean league circuit, and permits handed over by handwritten note.
- A commissioner since 2015 and three league administrators, in a line running back to 1959.
- The league answers the awkward ones directly: no guaranteed spot, no guaranteed playing time.
- The charter, revised June 2025, with a code of conduct addendum attached.
- A year with three phases: draft in January, season April to August, free agency in between.
- There is a cart in the header and nothing published to put in it.
- Ground rules are agreed with the home plate umpire before every game.
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