Bringing the thrill of baseball back to Marion

May 31 will mark the official return of baseball in the Marion area as the Thrillville Thrillbillies will defend Mountain Dew Park against the Jacksonville Rockabillies. The Thrillbillies are part of the Prospect League, a collegiate summer league. After the region’s former team, the Southern Illinois Miners, ceased operations in October 2021, it didn’t take long for someone to take on the challenge of restoring baseball to the Southern Illinois town.

Mountain Dew Park, which was long regarded as Rent One Park, was purchased by the ownership group of Black Diamond Harley-Davidson in January 2022 with plans to make the space a “cornerstone of sports tourism.” Several months later, in June, the park hosted the Colt World Series, a youth baseball tournament that featured teams from across the globe. During the opening ceremonies of that event, the group announced its efforts to bring baseball back shortly after it was taken away from the area.

Although two co-owners of the group, Rodney Cabaness and Shad Zimbro, held a track record of giving back to the community, they never expected to be owners of a baseball team. But they saw opportunity and promise in the space and surrounding town.

“Neither of them really knows that much about baseball but it was a situation where there would have been this huge, formerly glorious stadium that would have just been rotting,” said member of the Black Diamond marketing team Herby Voss. “So they stepped forward and they bought it …and people are giving us a little rope, you know. They’re saying, ‘Okay, well, we’ll see what you guys are doing because your history is pretty strong.’”

The Miners were included in the Frontier League, an independent professional baseball league, for 14 years. They initially exceeded expectations, leading the Frontier League in attendance in each of its first four years beginning in 2007. They won the league championship in 2012 and even held a 54-42 record in what would be its final season. But their success didn’t have the longevity to remain.

“They cared a lot initially about the Miners and then over time, quite frankly, the interest waned. And I think it was a number of reasons, but we very much intend not to make the same mistakes, you know, kind of continuously put a product out there that is going to excite people,” Voss said.

The name selection was determined entirely by the community, as people submitted their suggestions for the team’s name online until December 2022. Five finalists were selected, and 7000 votes were cast throughout the final month of the year, when Thrillbillies beat out the likes of names such as the Swamp Foxes and Angry Beavers. But Thrillbillies holds a strong resemblance to the term ‘hillbillies’, where the marketing team ran into a small roadblock.

“That has been used as a slur against rural folks for a long time. And so we recognize that and so in the design of the logos…we very intentionally did not have a guy in bib overalls, barefoot, with a jug on his shoulder…We went for characters, a rabbit, and a whitetailed deer.” Voss said “They are very timid creatures as you find them in nature…we made them very confident… So just kind of hoping that we can kind of turn that narrative on with thrillbilly and have it be something that folks can kind of puff up about, that they can be proud of, and that just sort of shows that even the most meek among us can be powerful and strong,”

The official team name Thrillbillies was unveiled at Mountain Dew Park on February 23, 2023, at the “Big Reveal Party” where not every fan in attendance was pleased with the name, but it reinforced the passion that the Black Diamond group knew the area had.

“I enjoyed the Miners 2 years ago, I’m glad there’s a team coming back to our area,” the first fan in line at the Big Reveal Party, Everette Keleer, told KFVS 12.

Ryan Shick and his family also attended the name unveiling event and he talked about their experience with WPSD Local 6.

“My kids are very into sports and things like that and anything we can do to come support local teams…Thought it was neat that we were going to get another team back since the Miners had left,” Shick said.