Ready or not, Marion's new ballpark to debut tonight

The last-minute hustle to ready southern Illinois' new minor-league ballpark for tonight's sold-out opener is at a fever pitch.

Mike Marchal knows everything won't be done when the fledgling Southern Illinois Miners, newcomers to the independent Frontier League, take the field against Evansville from Indiana for their home opener in Marion. But the construction overseer insists the important stuff will be in place -- the turf, the clubhouses and suites, the scoreboard and concession areas.

Given the project's unrelenting time frame, made trickier by bouts of foul weather, Marchal feels mighty good about that.

Rent One Park has taken shape on a site that just a few months ago was little more than a muddy crater on 31 acres, thanks to crews Marchal says often went more than a month without a day off and worked through holidays, including Monday.

"These guys have been apart from their families, and 70 to 80 hours a week isn't uncommon," Marchal says. "With every job, the deadline is always the challenge. But here, with the end date creeping up on us, it became a bit more of a challenge."

Mike Hernandez with Sportexe uses a power broom to move pieces of ground up rubber around the pitcher's mound Sunday, May 27, 2007, at the Rent One Park, the Southern Illinois Miners' baseball team's new stadium in Marion, Ill. Construction crews are working around the clock to get the park ready for the team's inaugural home opener Tuesday. The entire field, including the base paths and pitching mound, is covered in a polyethylene surface called Sportexe. Rubber pieces and sand are mixed in to make the playing surface dense, firm, durable, and fast. (AP Photo/The Southern Illinoisan, Steve Jahnke)

Still, "everything's that not done will be done" by today, aside from some touch-ups fans aren't likely to notice, says Marchal, construction chief for Holland Construction Services, the project's general contractor.

In this effort, nothing came easy.

Wealthy attorney John Simmons from suburban St. Louis had long been intent on bringing minor-league baseball to Marion, population 16,800. But his quest for the Class A team he wanted to move from Indiana snagged when the Midwest League signed off on his plan to buy the club but refused to let him move it.

Another investor group snatched up that club, and Simmons' group last August accepted an invitation to join the Troy-based Frontier League, whose existing teams -- including three in Illinois and one in suburban St. Louis -- already had unanimously endorsed an expansion.

Things have since fallen into place. The team made its mascot a burly Miner who swings a pickax at a baseball, a nod to the region's long history of coal mining. They hired a manager, a couple of coaches and filled out their 22-man roster. Just last week, they announced that Rent One, a rent-to-own business, bought naming rights to the park through 2016.

All the while, construction of the ballpark with nearly 4,000 seats stayed on schedule, complete with 14 enclosed suites, a picnic area and open concourses.

"We were in such a tight timeframe on this," says Erik Haag, the Miners' vice president. "When you say, 'What's been a headache?' it all has. It was such a quick build."

Haag says the local craving for minor-league baseball is evident in ticket sales -- the suites have been spoken for since September, and the club has sold "well over" 1,000 season tickets.

The new digs may be a welcome sight to the Miners, who, entering Monday night's game at Evansville, were 1-4 since their inaugural season began last Wednesday.