We aren't talking about high school!!! We are talking about 12 and 13 year old kids playing rec/travel baseball. In this neck of the woods, it means a season from April 1 to about the middle of July.
It is not practical to have a schedule by November/December unless the rest of the league and the tournament directors setting up the tournaments have that schedule ready by that time. Most leagues, atleast around here, set up the final schedules (when play is due to start in early April) by the middle of February. Field permits can not be applied for until 1 January, and it takes a few weeks to have these approved. Once the fields are coordinated, then the schedule makers can make the schedule for the entire league.
Again...Bulldog...you are missing the point because you don't have the experience to know otherwise. Some parents want it all...they want the team to have a low number of players so everyone gets playing time (as is the case with the families involved in this situation), yet they want the flexibility to miss some time from the team to attend to something else (ie. family vacation, other sports tournaments, etc...).
I'll pose it to the forum this way. Are the two families who have opted to choose basketball over baseball during what is known to be baseball season...are they letting the other 10 families down?