08Dad,
I can relate to that. We still have those type town leagues in Iowa. Former college players and old pros playing for small towns in Eastern Iowa.
Also, we run an Iowa Spring and Fall Wood Bat League here for the top high school kids. (Iowa's High School season is played in the summer rather than the spring)
We have played those games all over the state including the bigger colleges, best professional parks and in the biggest cities. The crowd was normally some parents and the rest were scouts.
One year we played a double header in Bancroft, Iowa. Bancroft is a farming community in northern Iowa with a population around 700 people or so. They had an old time ball field with "chicken wire" backstop and old rickety stands.
I got there right at game time and walked by a big barbeque pit that had a half block line waiting for food. When I got to the grandstands there were no seats available. There had to be well over a thousand people there. It was insane how much these people enjoyed baseball. The old timers told me it was like that everytime a game was played. What a great experience!