A Field of Future Dreams

First look at Fielders Ballpark, Sep-2010.

The view from the temporary party deck in right field.

A look out from the temporary bleacher behind home plate.

Chronological Tour: Stop 356

• Location: Rosecrans Road (IL 173) just east of Green Bay Rd (IL 131), Zion, Ill.
• Opened: 2010
• Home team: Lake County Fielders, Northern League (2010), North American League (2011)
• Capacity: 5,000 (approx.)

Costner and his partners found a relatively untapped market that he thought could support some more baseball, about 180 miles east of Dyersville: the shore of Lake Michigan halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. The town of Zion is on the lakeshore at the northern end of Lake County, only a little ways south of Kenosha, Wis., although the ballpark site is a couple miles inland on Green Bay Road, one of the old turnpikes that ran between the two major cities 90 miles apart.

Construction delays meant that the site was not even ready for the start of the 2010 season, and the team opened play at Carthage College in Kenosha. Then the baseball field was in place and temporary stands were brought in, but the lights were not up and running. It took half the season for things to reach a semblance of normal at the site, but when I attended on the last Saturday of the regular season, they nearly filled the temporary bleachers for a fireworks night.

At the end of the season, all the temporary seating was to be hauled away, and construction on a permanent stadium was to begin at the current field. The only part of the stadium that was completed when I visited in 2010 was the field and dugouts. Reports as of the middle of the 2011 season show that practically none of the construction work took place, and that the team was swimming in debt. The team manager resigned in midseason amid reports of unpaid players and staff.

Remarkably, the ballpark still shows as in place and tended in satellite images from late in the 2010s, although I have no indication that the field has been recently used. The bleachers have long since been removed.