Six brackets, and the top one is seventy
North County describes itself in three lines and gets everything essential into them: it is a recreational hardball league, its age divisions are 18+, 35+, 45+, 55+, 62+ and 70+, and it plays hardball -- not softball, in its own parenthesis -- on fields throughout North County at weekends.
Six brackets is more than almost any league in this directory runs, and the way they are spaced matters. Seventeen years between the first two, then ten, then ten, then seven, then eight. The gaps tighten as the players get older, because the difference between a fifty-five-year-old and a sixty-three-year-old is larger than the difference between a nineteen-year-old and a thirty-year-old.
It also splits several divisions into National and American conferences, and in some seasons by day -- a Saturday 55+ and a Sunday 55+ running separately.
The league's site is well organised around its members and almost nothing on it is legible to anyone else. A High Cheese league page keeps the schedule, the standings and every roster at an address the league owns, so a man of sixty-eight searching for baseball in North County finds a 70+ division that already exists.
San Diego North MSBL in detail
- Team schedules by club, on weekends, across North County.
- League standings sit at the top of the site, feeding six divisions and two conferences.
- Managers enter results and statistics; nothing reaches the open web.
- The champions list is the only public team roll — and it names thirty-odd clubs.
- Team stats, league leaders, a sponsored MVP award, and a stats entry form for managers.
- One league address at its own domain, plus Facebook.
- A new player signup, league forms, and online fee payment for players and managers alike.
- Fields throughout North County, none of them named.
- Six age divisions and a penalty section; no playing rulebook is public.
- A news section whose only listed item is a 2021 COVID protocol.
- No gallery is published.
- A sponsors page, and an MVP award carrying a sponsor's name.
- Every champion in every division, season by season, spring and summer.
- A decade of champions recorded, and a national title in the league's own past.
- Three portals — players, managers, umpires — and no officer named.
- How old is too old — and the answer is that there is a division above seventy.
- League forms for players and managers, a team application, a roster update and an ejection form.
- Two seasons a year, spring and summer, each with its own champions.
- Nothing is for sale.
- An umpire section with an application, a roster, an availability form and an ejection form.
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