Anti-merger, anti-raiding, anti-collusion, anti-tampering
The BAMSBL rulebook, last updated January 2023, opens with something no other league in this directory has: a Fairness Doctrine. The board and president have authority over every player, team and coach transaction, with a duty to ensure fair competition prevails for the players, the teams and the league as a whole. Anyone disciplined may appeal in writing not less than five days before the sanction takes effect, and the president may rule, defer to a board vote, or convene a grievance committee.
Behind it sits the strongest competitive-balance machinery here. Rule 165 is the anti-merger rule, 170 the anti-raiding rule, 175 the anti-collusion rule and 180 the anti-tampering rule -- four separate prohibitions on clubs combining, poaching, colluding or approaching each other's players. Alongside them: pool players, trades, a trading deadline, dissolution of teams, and a rule covering veterans who choose not to return to their current club.
The board's disciplinary power is drawn from the league's California bylaws and covers conduct deemed inimical to the best interests of the corporation, explicitly including anything that violates, circumvents or evades not only the rules but their reasonable intent, their proven intent, historical league practices or league precedents.
The playing rules run through six hundreds -- equipment and uniforms, game requirements, conduct and safety with a collision rule and a decoy rule, and playoffs and tiebreakers -- and include rules on alcohol and cannabis, smoking, and pets.
A rulebook of this weight needs to be one tap from the fixture. A High Cheese league page keeps the current version beside the schedule it governs, at the league's own address.
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.
- 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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