Two sentences, and they mean them
The PAB opens with a denial: this is not a beer league, this is not softball. It calls itself Philadelphia's premier adult men's baseball league and plays every game on a Sunday. What backs the claim is not the tone of the homepage but the rulebook behind it, which runs to some seventeen thousand words and is built around a live draft, keeper rules, tradeable picks and a professional-pitching ban.
Ten clubs carry names nobody inherited: the Leatherback Turtles, the Brazen Foxes, the Threshers, the Stingers, the Bearded Goats, the Homing Pigeons, the Thunder Cats, the Kensington Royals, the Brahma Bulls and the Peregrine Falcons.
Off the field it runs a golf outing and a Phillies trip. On it, everything is regulated -- and almost none of the regulation is legible next to the games it governs. A High Cheese league page keeps the schedule, the standings, every roster and the rules at one address the league owns, which for a competition this administratively serious is the filing system the rulebook already assumes exists.
Philadelphia Amateur Baseball League in detail
- Every game on a Sunday, three and a half hours, with the next game's start time as the clock.
- Divisional tables with clinching marks and five tiebreakers.
- Every team must keep the book, and not keeping it costs a club its awards.
- Sixteen players minimum, and a rule that lets a benched man leave with a refund.
- An official statkeeper, post-season awards, and no public numbers.
- Two league addresses — one general, one for the commissioner's business.
- A $150 deposit before a free agent joins a team, and no uniforms ordered until it is paid.
- Tarken and Edgley, with published ground rules and a groundskeeping rota.
- No professional pitchers, six innings of college pitching a season, and a fine for breaking someone else's bat.
- A golf outing, a Phillies game, and a newsletter to subscribe to.
- A photos section sits in the main navigation.
- The homepage notes outside coverage and names no sponsor.
- A divisional round, a bye for each division winner, and a best-of-three championship.
- A live draft with a lottery, a supplemental round, and a keeper pool for disbanded clubs.
- A commissioner and a co-commissioner, approving every trade and every fill-in.
- Can I pitch, will I play, and what happens if we only have eight?
- One rulebook of thirty-five numbered sections, published in full on the web.
- A year of deadlines: 31 January, spring training, week seven, the last game in June.
- Uniforms are league-ordered, and a trade means paying to change the name on the back.
- Umpires record the start time, sign the final score, and may inspect any bat.
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