Assembled, not recruited
Teams here are constructed rather than assembled by captains. Every club is designated Maryland or Virginia and 30+ or 48+, which decides where most of its games fall. Pitchers and catchers are deliberately spread so that no team is short of either. Clubs are then placed into divisions within their age group at a talent level meant to give them the most competitive and enjoyable season. The 60+ division typically runs four or five teams and plays Saturdays.
The only club named anywhere on the site is Team Ellis, which appears in a player testimonial.
Not one roster is published. For a league that builds its teams centrally, that means a player learns who his teammates are when a manager calls him.
A High Cheese team page carries the roster the league has just constructed at the club's own address, so the men placed on it in March can see each other before opening day.
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.
- 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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