Red means it moved
The bulletins on this league's front page are a running account of one man rebuilding a season. The May schedule changed again on 27 April, with more red numbers reflecting more changes -- different locations, different time slots, more rained-out games added -- after he managed to get a few more slots, weather and high school playoffs permitting. June's would arrive about 20 May. A July weekend was vacated at one ground and seven fixtures were individually relocated to three others across four weeknights. The August version contained a few changes and many additions to complete the season, with changes in red and the rest in black to distinguish the two, and x's marking the slots still available.
Rain in June -- which the league notes had never happened before in June -- cost most teams up to three weeks in a row and pushed the season into August and potentially past Labor Day, with midweek games, doubleheaders and in rare cases three games in two or three days.
Then the lights. A field's lighting work was not certain, most likely mid-August, and the president wrote that he had promised fifteen to eighteen games, some teams had reached the threshold and others would that weekend, and the next forty-five days were in flux.
Every one of those is a scheduling change that had to reach several hundred men by web page. A High Cheese schedule moves the game in place and it appears in every affected player's phone, which is precisely the job the red numbers are doing by hand.
San Antonio MSBL in detail
- Real hardball in five age divisions, in its fourth decade, on quality fields it says it earned.
- Scores are phoned in, standings are published on a Tuesday, and managers must check their own record.
- Scores are telephoned in at the weekend and appear as standings on Tuesday.
- Teams are identified by number in the schedule, and managers are asked to stop them forfeiting.
- Games played is the only figure the league tracks publicly, and it decides the season.
- A league number for calling in scores, and a president who signs everything.
- Tryouts once a year, in February, and you pay to play.
- Four main grounds carrying the season, including a university, an air force base and a stadium.
- Standard baseball for the 45s, and a substantially different game for the 60s.
- A president's bulletin board that doubles as the league's only public record.
- No gallery is published.
- No sponsor is named.
- Top four in each division, and an All-Star team chosen by the players themselves.
- Thirty-two-plus years, counted by the league itself.
- A president, and a managers' meeting that functions as the board.
- Divisions, season length and tryout timing are answered; the fee is not.
- League rules, league policy, league forms and a set of yearbooks.
- Tryouts in February, ball from mid-March, Phoenix in October, and a managers' meeting in January.
- Nothing is for sale, but the uniform gets its own instruction.
- Umpires take lineups at the plate meeting and hold the clock.
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