Delay of Game

Summer plans to bring an independent minor baseball league to the former Price Cutter Park in Ozark are on hold as two previously unified entities compete to purchase the stadium.

Ozarks Pro Baseball LLC, which four months ago began sales negotiations for the ballpark to play its so-called Heartland of America League, now is going head-to-head with organizers who split from the company in mid-April to form Heartland of America Baseball LLC.

Art Wilkinson, the former senior vice president of baseball operations for Ozarks Pro Baseball, started the Heartland of America Baseball company after conflicts arose over the business model.

Wilkinson said Ozarks Pro Baseball co-owners Phil Wilson and Tony Hutchinson wanted to stick with Wilson’s original vision for the league as a small, locally based operation that would bus its players to a number of small towns within southwest Missouri and northern Arkansas. He said the plan was a tough sell to committed investors and to players who had signed under the impression they would be scouted by Major League and affiliated baseball clubs.

“We saw this as a multimillion-dollar independent baseball league, a lead-in to bigger and better things, not an ultimate conclusion,” Wilkinson said. “Their idea was to have this resemble a local little league-style operation.”

Heartland’s four partners, including Wilkinson, are continuing with plans for a professionally scouted league that would play all of its games out of the Ozark stadium and satellite fields in the Springfield area, eliminating the expenses associated with travel, lodging and player per diems.

Wilkinson said despite a truncated 72-game playing schedule featuring only eight of the 10 teams originally planned, he is confident Heartland’s league could be playing baseball in Ozark as early as July 4, should Chicago-based stadium owner Horn Chen accept an undisclosed verbal offer made on June 5.

However, Brad Eldridge, the park’s volunteer director since 2005, said separate negotiations between Chen and the baseball groups are ongoing.

“If either party is able to come through with what they are promising, then they would be coming into the ballpark and doing something, but we don’t know what that even is yet,” Eldridge said, adding the owners haven’t received an official offer from either party. “It’s truly a day-to-day situation right now.”

Eldridge declined to state Chen’s asking price but said it hasn’t changed since negotiations started four months ago with the original Ozarks Pro Baseball group.

“Now with two organizations, it’s very confusing and convoluted, and it’s very frustrating on our side,” said Eldridge, noting the initial negotiations to bring baseball back to Ozark have threatened contracts with Springfield Metro League Baseball for use of the stadium and with Ozarks Technical Community College to use the parking lot for transportation training.

“The Metro League had to find another place to play and OTC has canceled their program, and now we’re sitting here holding the bag because these two groups have backtracked on what we thought we had originally agreed to,” Eldridge said.

Under the initial tentative agreement with Ozarks Pro Baseball, the company would have made an undisclosed first payment on the stadium purchase to Chen in April, with the final payment due in October at the end of the season. The first payment was never made.

Ozarks Pro Baseball’s Hutchinson confirmed the company still is actively pursuing a purchase of the stadium and that it holds a lease-option on the 22 acres surrounding the stadium with the city of Ozark. He declined further comment.

According to city of Ozark records, Ozarks Pro Baseball is current on its $1,000 monthly payment per the lease agreement that expires Oct. 1. Until then, the city has agreed not to market or sell the land.

City Administrator Steve Childers said one of three scenarios could occur in October: Ozarks Pro Baseball signs a $600,000 lease-purchase agreement with annual payments evenly spread over six years; the company terminates the lease-option; or the parties let the lease expire.

He said the city’s 99-year lease with Chen remains in place until another entity completes the purchase.

“From what I understand, neither of the organizations have been able to come up with the funding to purchase that stadium,” Childers said. “I think they continue to work on that, but having a baseball league in that stadium this summer is getting a little hard to believe.”

Heartland’s Wilkinson said about 200 players – 60 of whom he said already are training at Nixa’s Cy Sports Center – are under contract with the company. He said should the purchase come through, the company has plans to initiate roughly $1 million in repairs and renovations prior to the league’s opening day.

“We were prepared to complete the transaction on (June 5) when we made the original offer and I don’t see anything standing in the way at this point,” said Wilkinson, who serves as Heartland’s director of baseball operations and the Springfield team field manager. “Our league is strong. We feel pretty good about where we sit right now.”