Work out at the position or you cannot play it
Tryouts are usually held in mid-February to early March, and every player has to attend at least one workout and display his talent at the positions of his choice. The rule that follows is the one worth knowing: any player who wants to pitch or catch during the season is required to work out at that position to be eligible to do it.
That is a league protecting its own hitters and its own catchers from a manager improvising in June.
Behind the tryout sits a full draft system -- applicant eligibility, free agent eligibility, draft eligibility, player eligibility and pool players are five separate numbered rules -- and the league states that failure to extend best effort at a tryout is itself a rule.
Its invitation is nonetheless open: the BAMSBL is a league for everyone who loves hardball regardless of skill level, everyone interested is encouraged to participate, and more than anything else it is a place for fun.
A join page that takes the registration, states the fee and feeds the draft pool is what a High Cheese league page does at the league's own address -- with the workout eligibility recorded against the player rather than remembered by a board.
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.
- 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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