Answered by the players
How old? The league's own reporting gives the range as eighteen-year-olds to men over sixty, on the same field, in the same game. Ken Walsh of Vassalboro played semipro in the Stan Musial and Tri-State leagues in New York before a knee injury stopped him at twenty-nine; he heard about this league at fifty-five, went to a practice at Winslow High to see if he could still play, and found it was like riding a bike -- the swing was there, the legs were not.
How good? Not a league of hacks, in its own words. Most players were high-calibre in high school, several played Division I, and some played professionally.
Does the age gap work? Kris Targett, the league president, on his own competition: "Some of the hardest people to strike out in the league are the 40-, 50-, 60-year-old guys because they know to just put the bat on the ball."
What none of it answers is what a season costs or how a stranger joins. A High Cheese league page puts the fee and the join button on the same page as the schedule, which is the one question this league's reporting never has to answer for someone who already knows a manager.
Pine Tree Baseball League in detail
- Eighteen Maine towns, wood bats, and players from eighteen to over sixty on the same field.
- Late May to early August, one game a week, plus a midseason round robin at Colby.
- Divisional standings are published for the season.
- Final scores for the season are published, with Facebook carrying them first.
- Eighteen clubs, and some of the best names in American amateur baseball.
- Stat leaders and full statistics are published for the current season.
- A contact page, a team managers list, and Facebook for everything else.
- There is no sign-up form; you find a team manager.
- Seventeen home grounds — high schools, a college, an American Legion post and a town field.
- Official league rules have their own page, and wood is the rule everyone knows.
- The league's best writing is somebody else's — a 2017 newspaper feature it reproduces in full.
- A photo gallery, plus newspaper photographs from a game at Colby.
- No sponsor is named.
- A playoff bracket every August, and a midseason tournament at Colby College.
- Six titles on the record, including back-to-back doubles for Winthrop and Bethel.
- A president who plays second base, and a managers list.
- An official rules page and a PTL archive.
- Late May to early August, with a round robin in the middle.
- Nothing is for sale.
- The league keeps an umpires page in its navigation.
Compare