Don't count on the Cruisers in 2012

Not that anyone across the Frontier League was banking on the Oakland County Cruisers to return next season with a new stadium in Waterford Township, Mich., but you can probably count the team among the defunct.

One reason is Cruisers owner Rob Hilliard filed for bankruptcy last month. Hilliard, president of Diamond Heroes of Southeast Michigan, Inc., the corporation that controls the team, filed for personal bankruptcy, listing about $12,000 in assets and $414,000 in liabilities.

According to the Oakland Press, court records show legal filings against the corporation and individuals associated with the Cruisers.

Business debts listed include $17,334 to State Farm Bank in Georgia, $15,810 to Nationwide Credit Inc. in Georgia, $49,814 to Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati, $37,792 to Chase in Illinois, $13,088 to Advanta Credit Cards.

About the only thing the Cruisers have going for them is Hilliard has been through this before. In 1994, he was part of an ownership group for the New Jersey Cardinals of the Class A New York-Penn League. That group filed for bankruptcy after being hit with significant construction-cost overruns on its ballpark in Sussex County, N.J.

The Cardinals' ownership eventually reorganized and got out of debt. The franchise lasted 12 seasons before being sold and moved to State College.

Hilliard has not given up hope that the Cruisers will have a ballpark to call its own.

“I don’t know if the ballpark will be built where we originally planned (in Waterford), but we are working hard behind the scenes to make things happen,” he said.

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.

HBO and the Frontier League

The current edition of HBO's long-running series "Real Sports," which is hosted by Bryant Gumbel, features an interesting segment on Oakland County Cruisers outfielder Robbie Tolan (pictured), who played this season with a bullet lodged in his chest.

Tolan, who is the son of former major league outfielder Bobbie Tolan (Cardinals, Reds, Padres), was shot Dec. 31, 2008 by a Bellaire, Texas, police officer, who mistakenly thought Tolan had stolen a car.

To make a long story short, officer John Edwards entered a wrong license number – off by one digit – from Tolan's license plate when doing a check on the vehicle. The check came back as a potential stolen vehicle. A mere 32 seconds after arriving at the Tolan residence, the police officer fired three shots. One of those shots struck Tolan in his right ribcage.

If you have Comcast, the segment can be viewed through the On Demand feature. It is available through Sept. 27. There are a couple of brief clips of Tolan playing in a game at Lake Erie.

In 66 games for Oakland County, Tolan is batting .248 with three home runs, 30 RBI and three stolen bases.

The Fighting ThunderBolts

You can tell the playoffs are on the horizon for the Frontier League because tempers are starting to flare when contenders meet. There was an incident in Windy City's game Thursday night against Oakland County in which, according to the Daily Southtown, punches were thrown. Oakland County won the game in extra innings to pull to within two games of first-place Windy City in the East Division.

If punches were indeed thrown, it will be interesting to see if any suspensions will be enforced. The Wild Things begin a three-game series tonight at Windy City.

Read the story here.

Young: It was medical marijuana ... no, no really

Dmitri Young, the Oakland County Cruisers' vice president/bench coach who was recently arrested in Bloomington, Ill., on a drug charge, told the Detroit Free Press that the marijuana he was in possession of when arrested was for medical reasons:

“Since retirement, I’ve been in a lot of serious pain,” he told the Free Press in a telephone interview Wednesday from Florida. “From my quads to my back to anxiety from my mother’s death, it takes a toll. I didn’t want to use pills. I had already been to rehab before and knew I didn’t want to be on opiates. So, in talking with physicians, we decided this was the best way to go.”

Unfortunately, he said, “I used poor judgment. And I have to pay the consequences.”

Medcial reasons? C'mon.

Read the story here.

You saw this coming

The Oakland County Cruisers will not have a ballpark to call their own this season. That's no surprise to the people who follow the Frontier League.

The Cruisers announced Saturday – one day before league meetings in Avon, Ohio – that funding for a ballpark in Waterford Township, Mich., has fallen through.

The Cruisers planned to open a new 4,000 seat stadium – called Diamond at The Summit – behind the Summit Place Mall. The team held a groundbreaking ceremony last December and Rob Hilliard, pictured, one of the owners, said earlier this year that construction would start by mid-April. The Cruisers had arranged to play at Eastern Michigan University until a July 16 series against the Wild Things, which was was to be Oakland County's home opener in the new temporary ballpark. The final phase of the ballpark's construction was to be completed after the 2010 season.

According to the Cruisers, they have rescheduled all but one of their home series. They will use the ballparks at Eastern Michigan, Oakland University and something called Ford Field in Livonia, Mich. I haven't seen an updated scheduled to tell you where the Wild Things will be playing the Cruisers July 16-18 and July 31-Aug. 2.

The ballpark's original $9 million funding plan consisted of a combined Small Business Administration/U.S. Department of Agriculture hybrid financing system. When that fell through, the Cruisers hooked up with a Southern California private lending group, working on a construction loan and takeout financing package.

Hilliard told the Oakland Press that the ballpark could be ready for the 2011 season.

“Clearly, we hope and believe this is the case given the timing,” Hilliard said, “but we’ve been at this for three years, so I don’t think we could honestly say anything at this point other than the people we’re dealing with now are very committed to getting this done and they understand what our time frame is.”

Money from sales of 2010 tickets and corporate sponsorships has been kept in an escrow account. All interest earned on those funds will be applied to the full cost of tickets and sponsorships for the 2011 season.

For the Frontier League, this is bad P.R. The league had to know that you can't build a ballpark in three months, so it should have stepped in months ago and made the Cruisers schedule their home games at another location or make them (again) a traveling team. The warning signs were apparent last winter, when the Cruisers started selling home games to opponents. They did talk to the Wild Things about purchasing home dates but, according to one source, the Cruisers found the Wild Things' owners too troublesome to deal with, so the idea was dropped.

The Cruisers' ownership has been shabby at best, shady at worst. It has likely killed the Detroit market for the Frontier League.

According to the Oakland Press, the Cruisers are likely to be sold. Remember, the Frontier league has a new team in Woodstock, Ill., coming into the league in 2011.

Read the story here.

Young cruises into the FL

Dmitri Young, pictured, who spent more than a decade in the major leagues as an outfielder and first baseman, has joined the Oakland County Cruisers as vice-president and senior adviser-baseball operations for Diamond Heroes of Southeast Michigan, Inc., the ownership group of the Cruisers.

Below is a link to the story about the hiring from the Oakland Press.

Read the story here.

What I found interesting about the story is the Cruisers' ballpark is still not under construction. Apparently, owner Rob Hilliard has been attempting to get a group of investors from Long Beach, Calif., to provide additional funding. Hilliard said he wants construction to begin no later than April. The Cruisers will play some of their home games at Eastern Michigan University (again). The site for a July 6-8 series against Normal is listed on the Cruisers' homepage as "TBD" and the July 16-18 series against the Wild Things is still listed as the first game in Waterford Township at the new ballpark.

Three months to build a ballpark? Here's saying it won't be close to being ready by July 16.

What I found extremely entertaining about the article are the reader comments. If you thought this blog had wild comments, then this story is must-read material.

Cruisin' into the FL

The Midwest Sliders are playing their final week with Ypsilanti, Mich., as their home. WJPA Radio's Randy Gore conducted a two-part interview with Sliders president Rob Hilliard that was aired Saturday prior to the Wild Things' doubleheader games against Midwest, and Hilliard said the team will be moving to Waterford Township, Mich., for the 2010 season.

The plan all along was for a new ballpark to be built for in Waterford Township for the Oakland County Cruisers of the Frontier League. Some problems with financing caused team to play as the Midwest Sliders and as a traveling team in 2008. This year, the Sliders were based out of Ypsilanti.

"Sept. 6 is the last day of the regular season. Sept. 7 we'll be the Oakland County Cruisers," Hilliard said proudly.

The Cruisers will hold the groundbreaking for their new ballpark Oct. 29. It won't be completed until after the 2010 season, but there will be enough done for the Cruisers play there next May.

"We'll put in the seating bowl and playing field in the early spring and finish out the ballpark at the end of next season," Hilliard said.

The ballpark should be a good one for hitters. The outfield walls will be only 310 feet down the lines and the alleys will be 360. It will be 400 to straightaway center field.

"We'll have 2,800 stadium seats, 14 rows, and some benches with backs," Hilliard said. "We'll have bleacher sections down the left- and right-field lines, seven skyboxes and a media center behind home plate. The permanent clubhouses will be behind home plate and the players will enter right through the stands. You wouldn't want to do that in New York, but here in the Midwest we can do it."

The two seasons as the Sliders have been difficult for Hilliard and field manager Eric Coleman. Obviously, they are excited about the team finally becoming the Oakland County Cruisers and moving into a new ballpark.

"I think we'll be able to recruit better," Hilliard said. "We've been in a difficult situation being in the center of the economic situation morass here in Ypsilanti and being a lame-duck franchise. We've had some double-figure evenings in terms of fans. Our players like to play in front of a lot of fans, whether they're friendly or hostile. We've played some of our better games on the road."

Hilliard said the Cruisers' ability to start building their ballpark was hindered by the economic situation in Waterford Township (about 10 miles from Auburn Hills, Mich., where the Detroit Pistons play their home games). The team is currently conducting a public stock offering.

"Two of our principal owners, in terms of shares, are in retail, and the Summit Place Mall is clearly hurting," Hilliard said. "Another owner lost the equivalent of $3.5 million with two chain stores going out of business."