[ifspuds]

From the memoirs of Bay League founder John Baxter:

"Why did I even get started on the idea? We certainly had a lot of other things to be thinking about. We were bringing raw materials and technology through the gateway from Earth as fast as we could, but still, getting enough people and enough infrastructure together to start molding even a single city was very, very hard. Maybe that's why I started thinking we needed a distraction. Something to take our minds off the work from time to time. There were city leagues and teams in any settlement large enough to put together two teams to play against each other, so I knew there was interest in the game. Starting a professional league -- though the first seasons of the Bay League were professional only because the players were getting a paycheck -- was a risk. Nearly everyone thought we, the eight of us, were crazy to even bother starting it so early in the history of the Outposts.

But we started small. We didn't bother playing a whole lot of games, and the schedule allowed for a lot of days off, so that the players didn't get too separated from their fellow residents. We couldn't spare the labor, honestly. The teams would travel to other cities and most of the time on the off-days end up working on whatever projects were going on there. I have nothing but respect for those pioneer players. Yes, they got a little extra money to play ball, but they worked twice as hard as anyone, and that's saying something."