Marion, Ill., won't get minor league team from South Bend, Ind.

~ The Midwest League rejected the sale of the Class A Diamondbacks affiliate.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The Midwest League has rejected the sale of the South Bend Silver Hawks baseball franchise to a group that wanted to move the team to the southern Illinois community of Marion.

"The team will probably never leave South Bend in the foreseeable future," Midwest League legal counsel Richard Nussbaum said Tuesday. "The league said that Marion is not acceptable as a league franchise."

Nussbaum, an attorney in South Bend, said the league decided that traveling to Marion would add hours of travel for its teams.

"It has been the policy of minor league baseball in recent years to try and reduce travel, not increase it," said Nussbaum, who was chairman of a league meeting in Dallas where the decision was made.

The group from Marion can resubmit its application for transfer of ownership, he said.

Marion has a stadium under construction, and Nussbaum said the board of directors felt it would not be fair for the city to believe it had a chance of moving the team from South Bend.

Silver Hawks manager Mark Haley said he was surprised, but glad to hear the team would not move.

"The people of South Bend deserve to keep this team," Haley said. "New ownership and new ideas wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. I think we will have an interesting roster in 2006."

It was not immediately clear how the Midwest League's decision would affect Marion's plans for a stadium.

Messages were left Wednesday with John Simmons, an East Alton, Ill., attorney heading up the Marion baseball effort, and Mike Thiessen, Simmons' consultant. A message also was left Wednesday with Marion Mayor Bob Butler.

In July, Simmons' group said it had entered into a definitive purchase and sale agreement for the South Bend team. Thiessen said at that time there was a chance the group would move the South Bend team to Marion, but that no decisions would be made until Simmons' group took ownership of the club.

A Silver Hawks spokesman said then that it was premature to discuss a possible move.

Simmons secured a loan covering most of the ballpark's expected $16 million price tag. Marion also agreed to raise its sales tax on most items by one-quarter of 1 percent, with half of that increase earmarked to help repay the loan.

Thiessen has said the group hoped to have the ballpark built and a team in place by the start of the 2007 season.

The Silver Hawks team, a Class A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks, has been in South Bend since 1988.