The fat lady hasn’t sung yet when it comes to the future of the North American Baseball League’s Lake County Fielders.
But one thing is for sure — she’s definitely in the green room warming up her pipes.
The Fielders have reportedly not yet flown out to Maui to play a scheduled four game set against the Na Koa Ikaika Maui. As has been standard protocol with this organization so far this season, no official reason has been given as to why or if they will be flying out to Maui tomorrow morning.
Instead, news of the Fielders remaining in the continental United States first came down from AM radio station 1220 WKRS’s Facebook page. Na Koa Ikaika Maui on their website makes no mention of whether they expect the Fielders to arrive on the island in time to play the remainder of the series, nor do they mention when (or even if) tonight’s scheduled game will be made up. However, there will still be a baseball game played in Maui. Instead of playing the Fielders, Na Koa Ikaika will instead play each other, hosting an intrasquad game that is open to the public free of charge.
Na Koa Ikaika for their part appears to be just as much in the dark as to what’s going on with their would-be opponent as do the rest of us. On the team’s Facebook page, the team says only that the Fielders didn’t board their flight as planned and that they’ll keep fans updated as they get more information.
As for the Fielders themselves, he team issued a terse statement on their Facebook page reading as follows:
This evening’s game in Maui will not be played. We will attempt to keep you updated as best as possible with the status for tomorrow’s game. Thank you for your patience.
The North American Baseball League hasn’t acknowledged the postponement on their official website, with the only news coming out of Maui being this grammatically disastrous article on female knuckleballer Eri Yoshida becoming the first woman to earn the win in a professional baseball game in over a decade.
If the team was hypothetically going to make last minute reservations to fly from Chicago to Hawaii…well, it’d be costly. A quick search on Kayak.com shows that it would cost $491 per person one way to fly from O’Hare to Hawaii’s Kahului Airport, the cheapest flight available. Multiply that by a hypothetical 30 man traveling party and it would cost the team nearly $15,000 to fly out to play out the series.
That figure jumps significantly higher if you make it a round-trip with the return flight leaving on Sunday, since the teams are supposed to begin a series in Zion the following Monday. For a round trip flight from Chicago to Hawaii leaving tomorrow and returning Sunday, it would cost the team $1291 per person, a cost of nearly $39,000. Placed in context, that’s roughly 21% of the $185,000 in unpaid rent the franchise still owes to the city of Zion.
None of this bodes well for the future of the franchise, something that was spelled out via an internet message board by Calgary Vipers infielder Chad Ehrnsberger. Ehrnsberger, despite playing for an opposing team, seems to know more than just about anyone else when it comes to this situation. Here’s what he posted earlier today:
“The players were told this morning if they don’t go to Maui the season is probably over.”
That, sadly enough, would come as a surprise to virtually nobody, although again, we haven’t received confirmation from the Fielders themselves on whether this is the actual scenario that the team is facing. This latest fiasco is the second bizarre, largely unexplained postponement for an organization that would have made for a fantastic reality show had producres been paying attention. We told you about it here first — last Friday the team was forced to postpone a game after an inning and a half because they didn’t have adequate baseballs to play the game with. Kevin Costner, purportedly one of the team’s owners, has yet to issue a comment beyond saying through his publicist that he’s not involved in the team’s day to day operations.
Curiously enough, one member of the Fielders front office is speaking out — but it’s not about anything relating to the team’s future. Client Services Coordinator Lanaya Gutowski has taken to the team’s Facebook page to express her disgust with fans posting negative comments on the team’s page, letting everyone know tht she’ll be deleting any further negative comments posted on the site. Gutowski’s post was likely motivated by the fact that many frustrated fans and observers have expressed their displeasure on the team’s page in recent weeks as the situation in Zion has continued to get uglier and uglier.
So is it all over in Lake County? That much remains to be seen. Ballpark Digest is reporting tonight that at least one investor has expressed interest in taking over the team and taking them out of the North American Baseball League, instead having the team play in a league with more teams close by. That appears to be the most logical option seeing as the Fielders don’t currently have any opponents within a reasonable driving distance and independent league budgets aren’t exactly conducive to taking road trips to Hawaii, especially to play a mere four game series.
One thing seems to be for certain though. The next chapter of baseball’s most comically tragic soap opera won’t be unfolding on television, rather news of the next act will slowly seep out via Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild, seeing as Facebook appears to be the only manner in which the team is currently communicating with the masses.
