About Pocket League
A shoebox of baseball cards, turned into a game two people can play on one phone in about ten minutes.
What it actually is
Pocket League is a three-inning baseball game played with your own physical trading cards. Two players share a single phone. Each turn, the batter secretly picks how to swing and the pitcher secretly picks what to throw; the phone is passed between them so neither sees the other’s choice. Cards you photograph become players you can field.
It is a family project, built for one household of six and shared publicly because there is no reason not to. It is free, has no advertising, and collects nothing about you — see the privacy page.
How a game goes
- Pick who is playing — on your own against the app, one against one, or two against two.
- Each side fields the cards in their collection; the app sorts a batting order and a bullpen from them.
- Three innings. Every at-bat, both players choose in secret and the phone reads out what happened.
- Tied after three? Extra innings, with a runner already on second.
- Completed games feed a family league table — wins, runs, home runs, and milestones.
Built to work where children actually play
- Offline. Once installed to a home screen it works with no signal at all. Games live on the device.
- No typing in the game loop. Large targets, icons, and optional spoken play-by-play.
- No account needed to play. Signing in is optional and only backs games up.
- Deterministic. Every game is replayable from its seed and choices, so a result can always be reconstructed exactly.
What it is not
Not a card marketplace, not a price guide, and not affiliated with any league, team, player or card manufacturer. Player names are labels for cards a family already owns; gameplay ratings are invented for the game or derived from public statistics.
Technical shape
A React progressive web app served from the edge, with a pure deterministic rules engine, local-first storage in IndexedDB, and an optional API for backup. There is no tracking of any kind.