Thirty-seven seasons, and two men who played all of them
The BAMSBL played its first game in 1988 and marked its thirty-seventh anniversary in 2024. Two members have played in every one of those seasons -- Ray Allen and Pat Carroll -- and the league salutes them by name on its own front page and says it looks forward to their continued play. Nothing else in this directory comes close to that.
It runs 18+, 35+, 50+ and 60+ divisions with roughly twenty-six teams and almost 450 players, spread across the East Bay, the Peninsula, San Francisco and Marin. Teams play a sixteen-game regular season followed by semi-finals and a championship series, on weekends from April, with tryouts in mid-February to early March.
Its stated aim since that first game has been the best facilities, officials and equipment, and above all bringing back what it calls the true meaning of baseball: enjoyment. Its tagline is blunter -- don't go soft, play hardball -- and its rules page is headed play hard, play right.
What this league has already built is the archive most leagues in this directory only wish for. A High Cheese league page puts the schedule, the standings and every roster at an address the league owns, so the thirty-eighth season joins the other thirty-seven in one record rather than one more year of a website.
San Francisco MSBL in detail
- Sixteen games on weekends from April, across four divisions and four sub-regions.
- Standings and a stats login sit together in the navigation.
- Results feed standings and a written history; neither is public.
- Twenty-six clubs, many of them named in the Hall of Fame decades after they folded.
- A stats login, and a written history full of numbers the league clearly keeps.
- A contact page, a board and a president with real authority behind them.
- Tryouts in February, a compulsory workout, and pitchers and catchers must show it at the position.
- Facilities are the league's first stated promise; no ground is named.
- A Fairness Doctrine at the front, and four separate rules against clubs gaming the draft.
- Announcements on the front page, with an archive of retired ones.
- No gallery is published.
- A sponsors section sits in the top-level navigation.
- Semi-finals and a championship series, plus tournament teams in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Palm Springs and Florida.
- A written history of every championship since 1988, told as stories rather than a list.
- More than seventy inductees since 1999, with published criteria and a three-quarters vote.
- Ages, season length, tryouts and the pitching rule are all answered; the fee is not.
- Rules and regulations, bylaws filed with the State of California, and a league content archive.
- Tryouts February to March, sixteen games from April, and a World Series in the fall.
- Nothing is for sale; uniforms are governed by numbered rule.
- The best officials the league can provide, and a numbered rule against abusing them.
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