DuPage County Baseball League

The DuPage County Baseball League (DCBL) is a professional baseball organization, the second-oldest of the four major Metro County sports leagues in Illinois. A total of 30 teams play in the North Conference (NC) and South Conference (SC), with 15 teams in each league. The NC and SC were formed as separate legal entities in 1945 and 1946 respectively. After cooperating but remaining legally separate entities beginning in 1948, the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball in 1972. The organization also is a affiliation of the Chicago Metro Baseball League, which comprises about 120 teams affiliated with the League clubs, 30 of which belong to the DCBL.

DCBL’s first team was founded in Naperville in 1940. The first decade of county baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who often jumped from one team or league to another. The 1970s and 1980s were a time of expansion for the NC and SC, then new parks and artificial turf surfaces began to change the game in the 1990s. Home runs dominated the game during the 1990s, and media reports began to discuss the use of anabolic steroids among DCBL players in the mid-2000s. In 2006, an investigation produced a new report, which implicated many players in the use of performance-enhancing substances, including at least one player from each team.

Today, DCBL is composed of 30 teams: 29 in the DuPage County and one in Cook County. Teams play 65 games each season and five teams in each league advance to a five-round postseason tournament that culminates in the County Series, a best-of-seven championship series between the two league champions that dates to 1945. Baseball broadcasts are aired on television, radio, and the Internet throughout DuPage County and in several counties throughout the state. DCBL has the highest season attendance of any semi-pro sports league in the state with more than 73,000 spectators in 2017.

After a team wins the County Series, they advance to face the winners of the three other baseball leagues (Kane County Baseball League, Will County Baseball League, and Lake County Baseball League). The remaining two teams face off in the Metro Series, Which is a best-of-seven series at the Diamond of Chicago, in Chicago, Illinois.