How are the Top Baseball Towns rankings calculated?

Every championship a town's schools and leagues have won since 2000 is worth points — 3 for a high school state title, 3 for a Little League state title, 2 for a sectional and 1 for a district. Each title's value halves every 12 years, so recent wins count for more, and towns are also ranked within population bands so they are compared against places their own size.

Why do private school titles count for less?

A private school enrols from a whole region rather than one town, so its championship is weaker evidence about baseball in the town that hosts it. Private titles count for 0.75 of a public one. Charter schools count in full because they enrol by lottery from a defined district.

How the rankings are scored

Q: Are Cal Ripken and Babe Ruth titles counted?

No, because no archive of them exists. Little League publishes every district, section and state champion going back to the 1950s. Cal Ripken and Babe Ruth publish nothing below the World Series, so a town whose youth baseball runs under those banners scores no youth points here regardless of how much it wins.

Every rule is on this page. A ranking that hides its arithmetic invites exactly the argument it cannot win, so here is all of it — including the parts that count against us.

What a championship is worth

High school state championship	3 points
Little League state title	3 points
Little League sectional title	2 points
Little League district title	1 point

All divisions count equally — a Division 5 title scores the same as a Division 1 title. Only championships since 2000 are counted. Older titles are still on the site and still on each school and league page; they simply don't move these standings, which are meant to describe the programs families recognise now.

Recent titles count for more

A title won last June says more about a town's baseball right now than one won in 2003. Every championship's weight halves every 12 years:

Won	Counts for
This season	1.00
6 years ago	0.71
12 years ago	0.50
18 years ago	0.35
24 years ago	0.25

This is why the standings move on their own every season. A town that stops winning slides without anyone editing anything, and a town that wins in June climbs the following morning.

Towns are compared against places their own size

Dividing straight through by population would put a 900-person town with one fluke title permanently on top. Bands keep it fair without turning the list into a lottery for the smallest:

Under 10,000
10,000–25,000
25,000–75,000
Over 75,000

Population is the current Census estimate for the town itself, not the school district or the metro area.

Private schools count for less

A private school recruits from a whole region — Boston College High sits in Dorchester and enrols from dozens of towns — so its championship is weaker evidence about baseball in the town that hosts it. Not nothing, but not the same thing. Private titles count for 0.75 of a public one. Charter schools count in full, because they enrol by lottery from a defined district.

Maine is the deliberate complication. Its town academies — Fryeburg, Washington, Thornton, George Stevens — are private schools that serve as their town's public high school. They are still weighted as private, which arguably undercounts them.

Regional schools are shared between their towns

Oakmont Regional serves Ashburnham and Westminster, so each town gets half a title rather than the host town taking all of it. These are marked ⌗ in the tables. Where a district's member towns aren't known, the title stays with the town the school sits in — so a few towns are still over-credited, and we would rather fix those one at a time than guess at them in bulk.

What these rankings can't see

The youth half is Little League only. Little League publishes every district, section and state champion going back to the 1950s. Cal Ripken and Babe Ruth publish nothing below the World Series — no state rounds, no regionals. A town whose youth baseball runs under those banners scores no youth points here however good it is. Weymouth fields Cal Ripken and Babe Ruth programs whose entire record is invisible to this site, and 76 New England towns run Cal Ripken or Babe Ruth ball with no Little League program at all. That is a limit of what is published, not a judgement about the baseball, and it is the single biggest gap in this ranking.

Some titles aren't attributed to anyone. 1,116 of 1,320 high school championships are matched to a school in the directory. A title whose school or league can't be confidently identified is recorded but not credited to a town — usually a school that has since closed, merged or been renamed. Attaching a title to the wrong town is worse than attaching it to none, so anything ambiguous is left alone.

If your program's record is missing or wrong, use Request Update on its page. Self-reported titles are the only realistic route to the records no archive covers.

Where the records come from

1,320 high school championships and 2,046 youth titles, from the governing body of each state or the most complete public archive of its results:

Massachusetts	MIAA	Wikipedia's championship list
Connecticut	CIAC	the CIAC's own results platform
Maine	MPA	the MPA's past-champions report
New Hampshire	NHIAA	New Hampshire Hardball
Rhode Island	RIIL	rihssports.com
Vermont	VPA	Vermont Sports History

Youth titles come from the Little League district champion archive, which covers all six states.