Wild Things open 2011 season on road
The Frontier League will have one new team in 2011 while a travel-weary franchise takes a season off to (hopefully) have a home stadium built.
The FL announced Monday that its 19th season will begin Thursday, May 19 with two games in the Chicago suburbs, including one contest involving the Wild Things. Washington will open its season at Joliet (Ill). The yet-to-be-named team is the newest franchise in the Frontier League and will play at 6,5000-seat Silver Cross Field. Joliet had a franchise in the now-defunct Northern League and that team's asests were recently purchased by an ownership group that joined the Frontier League.
“Counting our playoff games, we set a record last season with over 1.52 million fans watching Frontier League baseball,” commissioner Bill Lee said. “With our adding a strong baseball market in Joliet, we are looking at another tremendous year.”
The other May 19 game is Lake Erie at Windy City. The other eight teams will play their season openers May 20.
The East Division will consist of Washington, Lake Erie, Windy City, Joliet, Traverse City and Kalamazoo. The West Division remains the same with defending league champion River City, Gateway, Evansville, Southern Illinois, Normal and Florence.
The Oakland County Cruisers – who with the exception of hosting a few games in Michigan the last two years have played as a travel team – will not field a squad in 2011. The league asked the Cruisers to sit out the season while finalizing construction on their new Diamond at the Summit ballpark in Waterford Township, Mich. The Cruisers will return to Frontier League play for the 2012 season.
According to the Cruisers' website, there will be a dispersal draft in which other Frontier League clubs will be able to select players from the Cruisers' roster. Oakland County will be able to retain league rights to 13 of its players for the 2012 season.
“Frontier League owners and the commissioner’s office have worked very closely with (Cruisers president) Rob Hilliard and executive vice president Tim Birtsas to bring about a solution that enables us to immediately add a great Chicago-area market like Joliet and to provide the best possible scenario for the Cruisers to break into the metro-Detroit region,” Lee said.
Added Hilliard: “While we were fully prepared to play the initial part of our 2011 season in an area college facility and the latter part of our schedule in a semi-completed stadium, the ideal situation is to unveil a brand new state-of-the-art venue with our organization being able to hire the right people and to give them a full season to properly market the Cruisers."
The Cruisers will begin the bid process in the coming weeks so that construction can begin as soon after the New Year as possible.
The league will not announce the complete schedule until Tuesday, so the date for the Wild Things' home opener is not known as of this writing.
Lake Erie will host the 2011 Frontier League All-Star Game on July 13, and the regular season concludes on Sunday, Sept. 4 with games in Gateway, Kalamazoo, Normal, Southern Illinois, Traverse City, and Windy City.
The FL announced Monday that its 19th season will begin Thursday, May 19 with two games in the Chicago suburbs, including one contest involving the Wild Things. Washington will open its season at Joliet (Ill). The yet-to-be-named team is the newest franchise in the Frontier League and will play at 6,5000-seat Silver Cross Field. Joliet had a franchise in the now-defunct Northern League and that team's asests were recently purchased by an ownership group that joined the Frontier League.
“Counting our playoff games, we set a record last season with over 1.52 million fans watching Frontier League baseball,” commissioner Bill Lee said. “With our adding a strong baseball market in Joliet, we are looking at another tremendous year.”
The other May 19 game is Lake Erie at Windy City. The other eight teams will play their season openers May 20.
The East Division will consist of Washington, Lake Erie, Windy City, Joliet, Traverse City and Kalamazoo. The West Division remains the same with defending league champion River City, Gateway, Evansville, Southern Illinois, Normal and Florence.
The Oakland County Cruisers – who with the exception of hosting a few games in Michigan the last two years have played as a travel team – will not field a squad in 2011. The league asked the Cruisers to sit out the season while finalizing construction on their new Diamond at the Summit ballpark in Waterford Township, Mich. The Cruisers will return to Frontier League play for the 2012 season.
According to the Cruisers' website, there will be a dispersal draft in which other Frontier League clubs will be able to select players from the Cruisers' roster. Oakland County will be able to retain league rights to 13 of its players for the 2012 season.
“Frontier League owners and the commissioner’s office have worked very closely with (Cruisers president) Rob Hilliard and executive vice president Tim Birtsas to bring about a solution that enables us to immediately add a great Chicago-area market like Joliet and to provide the best possible scenario for the Cruisers to break into the metro-Detroit region,” Lee said.
Added Hilliard: “While we were fully prepared to play the initial part of our 2011 season in an area college facility and the latter part of our schedule in a semi-completed stadium, the ideal situation is to unveil a brand new state-of-the-art venue with our organization being able to hire the right people and to give them a full season to properly market the Cruisers."
The Cruisers will begin the bid process in the coming weeks so that construction can begin as soon after the New Year as possible.
The league will not announce the complete schedule until Tuesday, so the date for the Wild Things' home opener is not known as of this writing.
Lake Erie will host the 2011 Frontier League All-Star Game on July 13, and the regular season concludes on Sunday, Sept. 4 with games in Gateway, Kalamazoo, Normal, Southern Illinois, Traverse City, and Windy City.
Labels: Bill Lee, Oakland County Cruisers, Schedule
posted by Chris Dugan at
2:21 PM
9 Comments:
Chris,
Did Darren Everson ever get around to returning your call? Haven't heard anything about from you about that.
Yes, he returned my call the next day, but I was off to a basketball game at Cal U. We'll get in touch here in a few days.
From the looks of the Wild Things e-mail survey, it seems they just might be toying with the start times
of the games. Not a great idea. A couple of the possibilities were worse than bad. One was changing the Sunday games to as early as 3:30PM. Even the current 6:35PM is too early, so why would they even raise the possibility of starting the games that early in the day.
Another possibility is that the weekday games be moved to 6:35PM. Why?
These are ONLY possibilities, but they seem ill advised to me. Sometimes it is too hot to start any game at 6:35PM. Given the Wild Things history, one should start to wonder how these changes would be an improvement. The very old, and the very young, sometimes have trouble tolerating the heat. The Wild
Things should just leave well enough alone.
I would like to see the starting times changed.Getting out of at 10:30 to 11:00 is to late with little kids.
"Getting out of at 10:30 to 11:00 is to late with little kids."
Either leave the little ones at home or leave early. Kids don't buy beer, I DO!!!!!
To I do, First of all beer is bad for you health.
If you have to drink that stuff go to a bar.They sould band beer from the ball park.
I have left early but I don't buy tickets to leavr early.
^^^ Rocket Scientist!
Baseball has no time limit. So, there is no guarantee how long any game will last. The games usually are about two ½ hours to 3 hours long. Sometimes shorter, sometimes longer. Football is a game with 60 minutes playing time but to play the actual game can take up to 3 hours, or more.
So don’t complain about your little darlings staying up too late. Most parents let the little snots run all over the ballpark with no supervision at all. Now, all of a sudden you become a good parent? Why do you just leave your crumb snatchers at home with a baby sitter? Then the rest of us can enjoy our unhealthy beer and not be constantly annoyed your little turds. Also, why did it take the starting time issue for you to become so concerned about my health?
"Tis the Season to be Jolly"
CURMUDGEON
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