Marion group pursues minor league franchise

MARION, Ill. -- It's been 101 years since the Cairo Egyptians baseball team won the Class D Kitty League title, and a group of baseball enthusiasts said Thursday far southern Illinois is hungry for minor league games again.

The Marion-based group, led by a local physician, said it's actively seeking a Class A team in Minor League Baseball's Midwest League to buy and then move to the southern Illinois city, and is even close to raising the $17 million it will take to get it done.

"If all goes to plan, we could be eating a hot dog at a game by April 2005," said Dr. William Hays, who is leading the effort.

The group on Thursday released the results from a $20,000 feasibility study, paid for by unions and tourism groups, that says such a team, playing in a new ball park, would attract more than 180,000 fans a year and pump more than $6 million into the economy.

Hays won't say how much of the $17 million price tag for the team and park the group has raised, but he claims it's close .

A spokesman for Minor League Baseball, which runs 160 farm teams across the country, said no team is publicly up for sale and the organization has no current plans to create new ones.

The Marion group would have to persuade a team to sell, then apply to Minor League Baseball officials to move it to Marion, spokesman Jim Ferguson said.

The Midwest League includes teams in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, and in Illinois, Geneva and Peoria.

"We'd have to steal another team," Hays said. He said he's currently talking to a few he declined to name, none of them in Illinois.