The national league organizations do a lot of good things. I would say that most importantly they have standardized coaching education, e.g. what should kids be

The national league organizations do a lot of good things. I would say that most importantly they have standardized coaching education, e.g. what should kids be learning at each age level. Then locally you have clubs and leagues that operate to schedule games and do all the legwork of reserving time on fields for games and practices, raising funds to pay for it, handling communication with parents, etc. Sure if you just want to just show up at the park on Saturday afternoon to see who else is there and hit the ball around, you can do that. Without some structure and organization, it will never go beyond that.