Where geezers live out their dreams
Ponce de Leon takes men from 30 upwards across the Washington DC metro area, and it is unusually clear about what it is: this isn't softball, it's hardball, the real thing, and anyone gets to play regardless of ability or lack thereof. The name is the joke and the mission at once -- the Spanish explorer who went looking for the Fountain of Youth, and a league for adults who want to rediscover the game without taking it too seriously.
It quotes its own players rather than describing itself. "Good try!" is heard more than criticism. Church softball teams can be more cutthroat. Nobody is going to laugh if you drop a ball -- they're just glad they didn't. One member since 2008 notes that the talent runs from ex-minor leaguers to first-timers and everywhere between, which is what makes every matchup unpredictable.
Three divisions, two seasons, no mandatory practices, and everyone who signs up makes a team. What it does not have is any public record of a single game it has played in forty years. A High Cheese league page keeps the schedule, the rosters and the results at an address the league owns, which is how a league that deliberately refuses standings still ends up with a history.
Ponce De Leon Baseball in detail
- One game a week, with three separate opening days in the first week of April.
- There are no league standings, on purpose, and every team makes the playoffs.
- With no standings kept, results are not published either.
- Teams are built centrally by state, age and talent, and no roster is published.
- No statistics are published, in a league that caps innings and hit batsmen.
- A league email, a league phone number, and a second address for photographs.
- Everyone who signs up makes a team, and the fees are published to the dollar.
- More than forty grounds across DC, Montgomery County and northern Virginia, each with an address and a map.
- Four runs an inning, nobody pitches before 36, and the batting order carries over from last week.
- Announcements and field status live at the top of the front page.
- The league asks players to send in game-day pictures; the division galleries say photos coming soon.
- No sponsor is named.
- Single elimination in spring and fall, seeded, with every team in.
- Founded in the 1980s — the site gives two different years — and serving 30-and-overs for more than thirty of them.
- A league manager and a managers' meeting; nobody is named.
- How old, how long, how often, and whether you will stick out.
- The rules, the costs and the uniform requirements are published as pages rather than files.
- A winter camp in Florida, a managers' dinner in March, three openings in April, and a fall deadline in August.
- A league jersey bought once per age division, and worn for as long as you keep coming back.
- The league is recruiting umpires, trains them, and pays them.
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