What sort of a time committment is involved with that in-relation to the church league softball teams I'm in? I know there's a league in the area around here, but I've never really looked into it. I'm mildly intrigued though.
Depends on the team, really.
In my 35-and-older-league there are two distinct divisions (only you don't see different divisions in the standings - just in the records). You've got one set of teams who are really concerened with winning. These rosters usually have a lot of guys who have played with each other for years, most of them either don't have kids, or could care less about spending time with their kids and would rather spend every waking hour focusing ontheir amatuer team. They aren't jerks (for the most part), but they probably care a bit too much about amatuer baseball.
The other set of teams are usually made up of guys who just like to play ball. These rosters usually have three-six really good players, 10 or so o.k. players and three-six really bad players who probably SHOULDN'T play baseball. But the botom line is, the manager is more concerned with making sure that every person who takes time away from their family to show up for a game gets into the game. NOBODY sits on the bench for the whole game.
My team falls into the second group of teams. We're actually not a bad team if we could avoid putting in the lousy players, but they get their playing time like everyone else and if you can't live with that you need to move to another team. My manger does a great job of making sure the best players on the field the overwhelming majority of the time and that the not-so-good players still get their playing time (usually at least two innings of a seven inning game). We have a lot of guys on the roster who have kids too so the wives will come and bring the kids and it's usually quite a thrill for the kids to see their dad play. And EVERYONE on our team buys into the philosophy of "everyone plays in the game" and if we lose, we lose.
On the selfish end of things, it helps that I fall into the category of the "three-six really good players" onthe team so I get to play A LOT.
I recommend it highly and I wouldn't give up after only one year. Usually you have to work your way into a niche on these teams and once you do, you'll find yourself getting more and more playing time as you build a rapport with the manager.