A league that refuses to keep a table
Asked whether there are league standings, Ponce answers in four words: there are no league standings. Instead there are single-elimination playoffs in spring and fall, seeded, with every team getting a shot at the season-ending championship.
That is a real decision rather than an oversight. A league whose whole premise is that a first-timer and an ex-minor leaguer share a lineup does not want a public table telling the first-timer's team it finished last.
Teams are instead placed into divisions within their age group at a talent level the league judges will give them the most competitive and enjoyable season, and separated by state -- Maryland or Virginia -- so most travel stays local.
None of that removes the need for a record. A High Cheese league page can carry rosters, results and seeding without a league table, so a season is documented for the men who played it while the thing Ponce deliberately does not publish stays unpublished.
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.
- 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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