Actively hiring
Ponce runs a standing recruitment notice for umpires on its front page, and the offer is a real one: comprehensive training, competitive compensation and flexible scheduling, open to experienced officials and to people who have never umpired. It describes its officials as essential to a professional, fair and enjoyable experience and as a respected team who take pride in their craft.
Its umpires do more than call the game -- the league's own FAQ says the field representative at every game is in most cases the umpire, responsible for making sure the equipment is there and that the league's special rules are applied properly.
Recruiting crews openly is rare and worth copying. Assigning them across forty fields and three divisions is the same problem as scheduling the games, and a High Cheese league page runs both from one fixture list.
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.
- 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.