Two founding dates, one league
The about page says Ponce de Leon was founded in 1986 to give men in the DC metro area a chance to get back on a ball field. The home page says it was founded in 1990 with the goal of providing men and women of all ages and skill levels the opportunity to play baseball, and adds that it has served adults 30 and over for over thirty years. Both are the league's own text and we report them as written rather than choosing one.
The second version is the more interesting for another reason: it is the only place on the site that says women. Every other page describes the league as men's baseball.
Beyond the founding, nothing is recorded -- no champion, no former club, no season.
Seasons kept on a High Cheese league page accumulate at the league's own address, so a fortieth anniversary can point at forty seasons instead of at two paragraphs that disagree about when it started.
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.
- 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.
Compare