The ugly situation which played out this season in the North American League for the Lake County Fielders is still not resolved with the city of Zion, Illinois:
The article covers much of the Fielders’ problems and discusses the larger situation of the city of Zion’s promise to build the Fielders a stadium as well as the situation where the North American League lost many of the originally-planned Chicago area teams. Those were the Schaumburg Flyers (who folded after the 2010 season, also owned by the Fielders’ owner), the Joliet Jackhammers (who folded and were replaced by the Slammers team in the Frontier League), and the Rockford Riverhawks who went back to the Frontier League for the 2011 season.
IndependentBaseball.net is not familiar with the intricate details of the Fielders/Zion situation, so all we will say is that the comment in the last paragraph of the article is unfortunate. “…Spoiled players” is not a fair thing to say to the players who signed contracts and expected to be paid in good faith for services rendered. Should the players not have received their checks then it is no fault of the players provided that they fulfilled (or even exceeded) all contractual obligations.
Independent baseball has been known to have substandard amenities as compared to affiliated teams, and many players do not recognize that fact. Nonetheless, a dark side of the industry is that certain owners and team executives for years have gotten away with skipping on payments owed to players, staff, announcers, sponsors, and local vendors. Hopefully the players, announcers, and others who signed contracts in good faith get their monies due to them should they have fulfilled all aspects of their contracts.
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