[ifspuds]

Life in the Outposts has not been easy in the 15 years since settlers first crossed through the gateway from Earth. The sheer magnitude of the effort of colonizing a new world is nearly overwhelming all by itself, and while much of the landscape is reminiscent of Earth -- mountains, rivers, oceans, green plants -- it's very obviously not Earth. The indigenous plant and animal life bears enough resemblance to Earth species that the new residents of the Outposts have taken to naming them after those familiar species from home, but a vast number of never-before-seen species have also been discovered. While no sentient life has yet been found on the planet, very little outside the settled continent has been explored. It is expected that if it did exist, any intelligent life form would have made contact by now. While a lot of this new home feels like the old one, it was not unusual, especially in the early years of colonization, for the settlers to suffer from homesickness so deep that it would lead to crippling depression and sometimes worse.

For a reminder of home, a number of the larger settlements began forming local baseball leagues. Some of the players had experience at various levels of professional ball back home, some players had never made it out of Little League and some had never picked up a bat or glove in their lives, but for all involved, it was a form of community that helped the expatriates forget about the difficulties of their daily lives. As the leagues became more popular and more cities began forming them, John Baxter, a prominent citizen of Tifton, came up with the idea of forming a nominally professional league. Baxter approached other cities to gauge interest the venture and found enough willing participants to form an 8-team league. With all the cities involved save one located around Tifton Bay, it was decided to call the new association the Bay League.

Any player from anywhere in the Outposts could put his name into the pool for the initial draft, and the level of interest from players was surprisingly high, enough to hold a 35-round draft. There was talk in the early stages of assigning players to the team from the nearest city, but teams from smaller settlements argued that they would be placed at a severe competitive disadvantage, so the full pool of players was made available to all teams in the draft. There would be no minor league teams, but each team would maintain a 10-player reserve roster and practice squad in case of injuries. There was a good deal of discussion about whether to pay the players and how much, and it was finally decided that each player would receive a small stipend. With everyone in the Outposts needing to work together to build their new society, even baseball players had to maintain daily jobs and the 70-game schedule was set up to allow for a large number of off-days to make this easier.