League History

The United Shore Professional Baseball League (USPBL powered by UWM) was founded by Rochester-based General Sports and Entertainment, and is the culmination of a 10-year effort by General Sports to bring professional baseball to the Detroit area. General Sports is led by President & CEO Andy Appleby, a former Senior Vice President of the Detroit Pistons and Palace Sports and Entertainment. General Sports previously owned and operated the Fort Wayne Wizards, a Minor League Baseball team in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the Derby County Football Club, an English football (soccer) club in the English Premier and Championship Football Leagues. The USPBL will give General Sports the opportunity to employ every best practice that its experienced team has learned over the past 30 years at the highest level of sports management and marketing.

The USPBL launched May 2016 with an initial slate of three teams playing a full 75-game schedule at Jimmy John’s Field in historic downtown Utica. The USPBL is the first league in history to feature best practices such as having all of its games played on prime dates, Thursday to Sunday from mid-May through early September – the very finest months of weather in Michigan.

The USPBL was designed as an innovative developmental finishing school for players seeking to make it to the Majors. The USPBL teams are comprised of top level college baseball players from around the country. The finishing school consists of state of the art coaching, the very best in musculoskeletal training and strength and conditioning programs, the latest advances in sabermetrics and video analysis, as well as a focus on personal development off the field.

The quality of the players and the baseball is very high, and USPBL players are scouted regularly by major league teams. In eight seasons, 51 USPBL players have been signed up by Major League organizations. In 2023, former Birmingham Bloomfield Beaver Randy Wynne with the Cincinnati Reds and Joey Wiemer with the Milwaukee Brewers. That brings the total number of former USPBL players who have made it to the majors to five!

See what Major League Organizations signed these players from the USPBL by visiting this page!

The USPBL added a fourth team the Westside Woolly Mammoths in 2017, joining the Unicorns, Beavers and Diamond Hoppers.

As the USPBL develops additional ballparks in the years to come, every ballpark will always feature two home teams, which will give our league the benefit of having home games every weekend and on only the best days of the week (Thursday to Sunday) and in the very best months for weather in Michigan.