The new ownership of the indy pro Joliet Slammers (Frontier League) has hired Chris Franklin as the team’s new general manager. Franklin grew up in Joliet (IL) and served as executive vice president and general manager of the indy pro River City Rascals (Frontier League) for four seasons. He has also had stints with the Single-A Kane County Cougars (Midwest League) and now-defunct indy pro Joliet JackHammers (Northern League). Read more here.
Slammers Hire New GM
Filed under Personnel & Operations
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The bulk of the fans don’t care what league you play in, they want to be entertained. Put a valuable entertainment product out there at an affordable price and people will respond. The twelve die-hard baseball fans will even notice what league or who the opponent is, if you do it right. If those twelve are pissed off, the other 2,000 families will drown them out.
I agree. The league doesn’t matter than much to most of the fans. But I do think this was a great hire by the new ownership due to his Joliet ties. He has previous GM experience and I would bet he has a ton of contacts in the area that will push the organization forward and increase attendance. I am sure that is why they hired him.
It wasn’t that the Slammers previous ownership was absentee. They were Chicago guys. I just don’t think people liked the fact that they weren’t Joliet natives. I think that hurt them. They inherited a bad situation from the Jackhammers. Not sure if anyone could have turned around that mess so quickly. After all the debts the Jackhammers left behind, I think people wanted someone local to come in and save the day. As to the Northern League, I don’t think it matters much in terms of attendance. The Jackhammers were announcing big numbers, but I think a lot of it was just pure fabrication.
This team has such a beautiful ballpark and when I last attended a game in 2008 it was still a decent draw. What happened here besides absentee ownership…do you think it had something to do with the Northern League fallout? seems every team other than Kansas City and Winnipeg took dives in attendance since leaving, St. Paul I don’t include because I have seen more than 50 games there and maybe there was between 1,500 and 2,500 in attendance.
Sounds like a good hire. The Slammers previous ownership wasn’t from the Joliet area. They were all from the western suburbs. This guy was raised in the area and has local ties. I bet the Joliet area will respond way better to him because he is from here.
Congrats to this kid, seems like a great hire. However, Joliet will never be like it was during the Jackhammers hey day. The Frontier League is a lower level circuit and the owners of this club should have went to the AA when they had the chance.