Every May, our team page gets read more than the sports section.

I'm an insurance adjuster. I write up car accidents and wet basements all day, and if the job has taught me one thing, it's what people actually read: the part that says when, the part that says where, and the part that says what they owe. Nobody reads the rest of the policy. A youth baseball team page works exactly the same way.

I've managed my son Allen's team in our township's Little League for three seasons now, the 11-and-12 division, the last stop before the big field. The first spring I made a team page because the league asked every manager to, and I put everything on it: the kids' batting averages, a clip art scoreboard, a MIDI of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" that started by itself, a photo of me in my hat. Six families looked at it once. By the third season, the page got looked at so much in May and June that one mother told me she checked it before she checked the weather.

I took the averages off, and the MIDI, and the picture of me. What made the difference was everything I put on in their place. That's what this page is about.

I'm not linking our own team page from here, by the way. It's for twelve families, not the whole Internet, and that's sort of the point. But I'll show you exactly how it's put together, and on the template page you can copy the whole thing and put your own kids in it.

The busiest single day all year was Tuesday, May 18: 97 loads. It started raining at noon and didn't stop. Every one of those 97 was somebody wanting to know one thing. That day told me more about team pages than the whole first season did.

THE LINEUP
Six rules, in batting order. The first two get on base for you. Without them, nothing else on the page matters.

1. THE SCHEDULE, WITH DIRECTIONS, ON TOP

The schedule is the most-read thing on any team page, so it goes at the top, above the welcome, above the team name if you have to. Every game gets one row: the day and the date, the time, who we play, home or away, which field, and how to get there.

Directions go right in the row, in one or two lines, written the way you'd say them to somebody at the field, starting from a place everybody in town knows: "Route 33 east past the Wawa, left at the firehouse, field is behind the middle school." Never "see map." Nobody has the map. The map is in the glove compartment of the car that isn't here.

Put the day of the week with the date. "Tue. 5/4," not "5/4." Half the parents think in days and half think in dates, and the ones who think in dates are always the ones who show up on the wrong Tuesday.

Parents print the schedule and stick it on the refrigerator. So make it print on one page, and put the date you last changed it right under it. When the refrigerator copy and the Web page disagree, that little date settles it.

2. THE RAIN-OUT LINE, BY 3 P.M.

On a game day, one line goes at the very top of the page, in big type, above even the schedule:

Our league decides on weeknight games by 2:30. I call the league's rain-out line from my desk at 2:30, and the page says ON or POSTPONED by 3:00. Every time. That promise is the whole reason the page works. Once parents learn that the line is up by three, they stop calling you at work, they stop calling each other, and the kids stop calling everybody. Break the promise twice and you're back to fourteen phone calls.

Always put the time you updated it. "Updated 2:45 p.m." tells a parent the line is today's and not yesterday's. If it starts pouring at 5:30 after I've said ON, the umpire makes the call at the field, and I put a line up by nine that night saying what happened.

This spring we had 19 game days. I had the line up by 3:00 on 18 of them. The one I missed, I was standing in a flooded basement in Old Bridge with a clipboard. I still hear about it.

3. THE SNACK LIST AND THE CARPOOL LIST

Snacks: one family per game, in order down the roster, listed by the kid's first name: "Byron's family." Put the rule right on the list in plain words. Ours says: drinks and something for after, figure on eighteen with brothers and sisters, no peanuts or peanut butter anything because we have an allergy on the team, and if you can't make your week, trade with somebody and e-mail me so I can fix the list. That last part is the one that saves you. Parents will trade happily all season long if they know where the official list is.

Carpools: for away games, who's driving, how many seats they have, and where and when they're leaving from. "Leaving the school lot at 5:15, two seats" is all anybody needs. Never a home address. Never.

These two lists are what turn a team page from something the manager made into something the families use. Two of our mothers told me the snack list alone was worth the whole page, and one father who drives for the carpool said it was the first season he didn't make a single phone call.

4. THE END-OF-SEASON PARTY

Batting cleanup, naturally. Put it up three weeks ahead and keep it right under the schedule until it's over: the date, the place, the time, what to bring, and who to tell you're coming. Ours was Saturday, June 26, at the pavilion in the township park, noon to three, families bring a side dish, the team buys the pizza, and every kid gets a trophy.

After the party, the page gets one more update: a thank-you to the parents who drove, worked the snack stand and kept the scorebook, to the umpires, and to the sponsor. Then a line saying when fall ball and spring sign-ups are. That's what the July and August loads in the box score are.

5. FIRST NAMES AND NUMBERS. THAT'S ALL.

The roster on our page is a first name and a jersey number for each kid. That's it. Here's what's not on it, and why:

When I write two lines about a game, a kid gets named only for something good: a catch, a walk in a full count, a great throw from the outfield. Over a season, every kid gets named. I keep track in the scorebook to make sure. Don't think the parents don't count.

6. FIVE MINUTES, FROM WORK, AT LUNCH

If a team page takes an evening to update, it won't get updated. Mine has to be something I can fix from my desk at lunch with a sandwich in the other hand. So:

One page. Schedule, rain-out line, snacks, carpools, roster, party, all in one file. One file to open, one file to fix.
Plain tables. No frames, no pictures I'd have to make in a paint program, nothing that moves. The baseball at the top is from the free clip art. That's the decorating.
Any computer. I open the page right in the browser at work with the File Manager's Basic HTML Editor, change a line, and save. No special program, nothing to install. The File Manager opens any page in the editor with one click.
A copy at home. Every Sunday night I save the page to a floppy disk. Somebody in my line of work gets to see what happens to people who don't keep a copy.

I timed myself this May. Putting up the rain-out line: one minute and forty seconds. Adding a score and two lines about the game: four minutes and ten seconds. Changing the snack list after a trade: under a minute. If it takes you longer than five minutes, there's too much on your page.

GOOD TEAM PAGES I'VE SEEN

Oakdale Tigers Little League. Coach Mike's results table gives every game a row with the date, the opponent and the score, and a short note on the ones that mattered ("Clinched first place!"). His roster gives every kid a kind line in the "Coach Says" column, he thanks the parents and the umpires, and the scorekeeper and the sponsor by name, and the sign-up information for next spring is already up. That's a page families come back to in September.

Brandt Plumbing Astros, Fall Ball '99. The assistant coach, Ron Rock, says it better than I do, right in his welcome: instead of twelve families calling each other at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, check the page first. His roster is first names only, his snack schedule says no peanuts in plain words and asks people to trade and e-mail him, and when Hurricane Floyd washed out a game he explained exactly what happened to the field and when the makeup would be posted. That's rules 2, 3 and 5 right there, and I've never met the man.

Coaches and parents since April 1999:


Questions from other managers are always welcome:
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Last updated Saturday, September 18, 1999 · © 1999 Joseph Grieco