Answered better than most
How old? Thirty by the end of the year, with no upper limit. New players who are 48 are encouraged into the 48+ division but may choose 30+. The 60+ division needs 60 by year's end, with an allowance for two players aged 58 or 59 per team who may not pitch. And to pitch in 30+ at all you must be 36.
How long? Nine innings scheduled, no new inning after two hours forty-five, a hard limit of three hours, and no extra innings in the regular season.
How often? One game a week, usually Sunday, occasionally Saturday. The 60+ division plays Saturdays specifically to avoid clashing with the 48+.
Practices? None organised. Teams arrange their own if they want them.
Will I sit? No one sits more than one consecutive defensive inning unless they choose to -- the league says outright this exists so that players whose skills are not as good as others still play.
Equipment? A league field representative, usually the umpire, is at every game and makes sure the kit is there.
And the one everybody asks -- I haven't played since whenever, will I stick out? The league's answer: we don't think so, but judge for yourself, and come to the new player workout two weeks before the season.
A High Cheese league page puts these on the same page as the fee and the join button, so the answer and the decision happen in one place.
Ponce De Leon Baseball in detail
- Named for the man who went looking for the Fountain of Youth, and run on that principle.
- 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.
- 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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