It began at a bar, and the league says so
The league keeps its history as a timeline it calls a living document, presenting momentous occasions and snippets from league communications through the years, so that players can relive what the People's Baseballers of yore felt.
It opens thousands of years ago, when women and men began playing with sticks and rocks recreationally -- one tossing the rock, the other trying to hit it -- sourced to anonymous. Then 1887, when the New Orleans Pelicans were formed.
Then 2015, when Gabriel Goldstein stopped a game of ping pong at a lounge to declare that women are not supposed to play softball, they were meant to play baseball.
Then February 2016, a night at Pal's Lounge. Three future members -- Becky Mumaw, Hagen Curl and Adam Kronenberg -- in the odd three weeks of a February with an early Mardi Gras. Swayed, the league records, by the Carnival spirit, or the gift of non-Carnival time, or the thunder and lightning outside, or the several beers consumed, Adam Kronenberg declared he would start a league of baseball. A drunken idea that he happened to remember the next day.
On 13 March 2016 eleven baseballers turned up and could not field a game, so they took batting and infield instead, and the league's first circular thanked them by name and ended in capitals: there will be 18 people and we will play a game of baseball, three o'clock at Lemann Playground on Sunday, please bring yourself and at least one other player. A week later twenty-one people came and played nine innings, pitching and catching for their own teams, and the American League beat the National League -- who were the Crete Street Riot -- 11-9.
A record like that is worth more than any standings table, and it currently lives on a rented theme. A High Cheese league page keeps every season at the league's own address, so the timeline has ten years of games underneath it rather than beside it.
The People's Baseball League in detail
- Co-ed, fast-pitch, wooden-bat baseball in New Orleans, open to anyone who wants to play.
- Sunday afternoons, two seasons a year, with makeup games arranged by the teams.
- Current standings and an all-time standings table, kept as separate pages.
- Weekly recaps written in the league's own voice, plus broadcasts.
- Ten clubs, named for the wards, streets and monsters of New Orleans.
- Run differential is used in the rules; no individual statistics are published.
- A contact section, a sign-up route and a donate page.
- A sign-up form, a waiver and dues paid together, and a mission that names who is welcome.
- It started at Lemann Playground at three o'clock on a Sunday.
- Version 3.1, amended by majority vote, with each team and the commissioner holding one vote.
- Games are broadcast and archived, and the league runs a podcast called Pitch Sequence.
- A social feed embedded on the about page, currently broken.
- A donate page rather than a sponsors page.
- Six championships on record, three of them to the Rougarou.
- A commissioner with one vote, and managers with one each.
- Who can play, what kind of baseball, and what happens when a game ties.
- A rulebook published as a page and as a PDF, plus a waiver.
- Two seasons a year, with championships in June and December.
- Nothing is for sale; the league takes donations.
- An umpire-in-chief with the final call, and ejection powers written down.
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