Fourteen years, four times over
The league's team list carries a column almost nobody publishes: how many seasons each club has been in it. The Colt 45's 40, the Seadogs 28 and the Hops have all been here fourteen years. The Salty Dogs and the Seadogs 50 have thirteen. The Providence Brewers have twelve. The Braves 40, the Mariners and the PV Seadogs 40 have ten each, Wheelhouse RI nine, Strike FX Smokies 28 eight, and the Providence Padres, the Colt 45's 50 and Strike FX Smokies 40 seven.
At the other end, the Braves 50, the Darlington Bulls, the Muskrats and the RI Astros are all in their third season, and Elite is in its fifth.
That single column tells you the league has a stable core of clubs that have been running for well over a decade and a steady stream of new ones arriving -- which is the healthiest shape an amateur league can have and something almost no other directory entry can demonstrate.
A High Cheese team page belongs to the club rather than the season, so a fourteen-year record sits at one address with every roster and result on it, and season fifteen is added rather than counted.
Rhode Island MSBL in detail
- Three age divisions, nineteen clubs, and twenty-nine ballparks in the smallest state in the union.
- Weekend mornings and afternoons, weeknights at seven, across three divisions.
- Separate tables for the 28, 40 and 50 divisions.
- Results appear beside the fixtures as soon as they are played.
- A statistics section sits alongside the standings and schedule.
- A contact page and a Facebook page the league actively promotes.
- The platform offers Login and Register, and the league publishes no fee or route in.
- Twenty-nine grounds with full addresses, including Cardines Field and Brown's Murray Stadium.
- The league publishes an RIMSBL rulebook as its own menu item.
- One standing news item, about the Facebook page.
- The league asks members to post their photographs to Facebook.
- A sponsor page in the main menu, and one sponsor visible in a club's name.
- No postseason or champion is publicly published.
- A Hall of Fame in the main menu, and clubs going back fourteen seasons.
- Nobody is publicly named.
- Ages and grounds are answerable; cost, season length and how to join are not.
- A documents and forms section sits in the main menu.
- No season dates are published.
- Nothing is for sale.
- No crew or assignor is named.
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