A year that ends in Phoenix
Tryouts run mid-February to early March. The regular season starts in April and runs sixteen games on weekends, followed by semi-finals and a championship series. The national season is capped by the fall World Series in Phoenix, with other tournament trips to Las Vegas, Palm Springs and Florida.
The rulebook adds its own dates -- a trading deadline, a last weekend of the regular season with an elimination game, and playoff eligibility requirements measured in games.
A season entered once on a High Cheese league page dates itself into every player's calendar, tryouts and trade deadline included, which for a league with numbered rules about both is the administration done once.
San Francisco MSBL in detail
- Don't go soft. Play hardball. Four divisions, 450 players, and two men who have never missed a season since 1988.
- 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.
- 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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