Is Rockford the 12th team?

Let's face it, the Kalamazoo Kings have no plans to play in the Frontier League in 2011.

Never did.

That much became obvious when the Kings let their employees go last fall, closed the office, didn't sell season sponsorships for 2011 or sign coaches and players. Who knows what Kings owner Bill Wright was trying to accomplish when he told the Kalamazoo Gazette in mid-February "I’m not leaning towards playing."

Wright knows he's not going to field a team. The rest of the Frontier League knows the Kings won't be around for spring training in May. Commissioner Bill Lee knows it, too.

So why is Kalamazoo still on the schedule? How can a baseball league go ahead with an odd number of teams? Why didn't Lee give Kalamazoo a drop-dead date to announce it's intention to play or "go dark" this season? Will the Frontier League revive the Midwest Sliders and have a travel team as its 12th club?

That's a lot of questions. And because I asked 'em, I'll get the first crack at playing Answer Man. Here goes:

Kalamazoo is still on the schedule because, well, you need a 12th team. Some team is going to play Kalamazoo's schedule. It just won't be the Kings. That Kalamazoo was even on the schedule in the first place, without a commitment from its owner to field a team, makes no sense. Those at the league office must have felt having a schedule with a bogus team at least helped the other 11 clubs in their efforts to start selling tickets and securing ballpark dates.

Obviously, the Frontier League can't have a season with 11 teams. There are two alternatives: the traveling Midwest Sliders or bring in a team from another league.

That leads us to a story by ballparkdigest.com. The website reported Thursday that a group with ties to the Prospect League's Chillicothe Paints (formerly of the Frontier League) is negotiating to purchase the Rockford RiverHawks (formerly of the Frontier League) and move them from the North American Baseball League back to the Frontier.

A quick background: Rockford joined the Frontier League in 2002 and played through 2009. Last year, the RiverHawks defected and joined the Northern League, with its no-age-limit rule and higher salary cap. Though the switch helped both leagues -- each had an odd number of teams before the move -- there were some hard feelings among Frontier League owners toward Rockford's ownership.

To make a long story short, Rockford was one of the three remaining Northern League teams that joined forces several months ago with the struggling Golden League and struggling United League to form the NABL. One of those former NL teams (the cash-strapped Schaumburg Flyers) are no more. The other, the Lake County Fielders, don't have a completed stadium.

The NABL has problems and they are great. It has teams ranging from Calgary to Maui to San Angelo, Texas. Only Rockford and Lake County (Ill.) are in the midwest. Travel is going to be wildly costly for Rockford, if the league even makes it to opening day. Selling the club solves many potential problems for Rockford's owners.

According to ballparkdigest.com, the NAL recently circulated a new 10-team schedule that does not include Rockford. The RiverHawks were supposed to have a news conference last Thursday to discuss their schedule in the NABL. I was told that event was postponed until Monday.

Expect that news conference to either be scrapped again or held to announce the RiverHawks are being sold and moving back to the Frontier League. Let's assume the latter happens. It would create some minor problems and solve many big ones.

Rockford, of course, would inherit Kalamazoo's schedule and play in the East Division. The RiverHawks also would have to trade or release many of its players because they're over the FL's age limit. According to the RiverHawks' website, Rockford has 23 players signed. They would have to get rid of 11 because of the Frontier League's age rules.

That leaves the problem of what to do with the 20 players whose options were exercised during the winter by Kalamazoo. The scenarios that make the most sense would be to declare those players free agents or hold a dispersal draft. Transferring them to Rockford makes no sense.

Then again, what has made sense this offseason in the Frontier League?

Putting stock in the Sliders

A few comments on this blog have hinted that the Wild Things are going to sale stock in the team to the public. Well, if that's true, the Midwest Sliders seem to have beaten them to the punch.

Here's a story from Crain's Detroit Business about the Sliders' plan to sell up to $5 million in stock to help fund a new ballpark in Oakland County's Waterford Township. The move is a result of the team's ownership being unable to get bank funding for the project.

Shares will be $10 each and sold in blocks of 100.

The Sliders are awaiting awaiting federal Securities and Exchange Commission approval for the public offering.

The Sliders are playing this season in Ypsilanti, Mich., at Eastern Michigan University.

I tried attaching a link to the story but it kept redirecting to a subscription page. Here's part of the story:

Minor-league baseball's Sliders plan stock offering
By Bill Shea

Backers of a new local minor-league baseball team plan to sell up to $5 million in stock as part of a bid to raise funds for a new stadium in Oakland County's Waterford Township — a move forced by bank unwillingness to loan money for such a venture.

Owners of the Midwest Sliders in Ypsilanti, part of the independent 12-team Frontier League, are awaiting federal Securities and Exchange Commission approval for the Regulation A public offering. There is no approval timetable or sale date yet.

The money is needed to build a $9.5 million, 3,900-seat stadium on an 11-acre site to be called the Diamond at the Summit stadium, next to the Summit Place Mall, in 2010 — a plan that could be scaled back depending on how much the stock sale raises.

The original plan, announced early last year, was to use debt-financing to construct the stadium. The global economic crisis that erupted last September dried up the debt financing market, team President and CEO Rob Hilliard said, forcing the Sliders to explore alternatives.

“We're in the epicenter of the economic morass,” he said.

The goal now is to go the “Green Bay Packers route” and sell shares of the newly formed company in a bid to raise enough money for the stadium, Hilliard said.

The National Football League's Packers are the most widely known example of publicly owned teams, having been a nonprofit governed by a board since 1950. The Sliders will continue to have majority private owners who maintain controlling shares of the team.

Shares will be priced at $10 each and sold in blocs of 100, with a maximum of 500,000 shares for sale, said securities attorney Michael Raymond of the Ann Arbor office of Detroit-based law firm Dickinson Wright P.L.L.C., who is handling the deal for the Sliders.

Until the sale, it's impossible to know if enough people are interested in spending $1,000 to own a piece of such a team, but if there are it's a boon for the Sliders.

“It's perfect for the team owner if they can pull it off — lose no control, get the money, pay it back only if you feel like buying the shares back,” said Rodney Fort, professor of sports management at the University of Michigan.

As part of the public offering bid, backers converted the assets of the original ownership partnership, Baseball Heroes of Oakland County L.L.C., into $2.9 million worth of stock in Diamond Heroes of Southeast Michigan Inc., according to an SEC filing from March 31.

Backers already have invested $4 million in the project and hired Leonard Capital Markets of Troy and Dickinson Wright to raise the remainder, Hilliard said.

A parking deal was made with Timina L.L.C., which owns Summit Place Mall, for 800 spaces, and with Summit West Investments and Summit North Investments for 500 spaces.

The Sliders are averaging a league-worst 246 fans per game over eight home games this year at Oestrike Stadium, their temporary home on Eastern Michigan University's campus, according to league statistics. The Southern Illinois Miners lead the league with 24,873 fans at six home games, or 4,146 per game.