NORMAL - Frontier League commissioner Bill Lee has extended the welcome mat for a Normal baseball team to join his league.

"I would love to have Normal," Lee said Tuesday. "Normal would be a tremendous fit for us. Hopefully, it will be a very nice marriage between the two."

A Mike Veeck-led ownership group was recommended to the Heartland board and the representatives of the Town of Normal council on Tuesday. Veeck has indicated he would place a Normal team in the Frontier League.

Normal would seem to fit nicely into the 12-team Frontier League's West Division, which has teams in Rockford, Marion, Crestwood, Evansville, Ind., and two teams in the St. Louis metropolitan area which play in Sauget and O'Fallon, Mo.

"Geographically, Normal fits very nicely into the league," said Lee. "I like to think the strength of our league, the reputation, the longevity of our league stands up against any scrutiny and against all competition."

Lee agrees with Veeck that it would be wise to shoot for a 2010 debut for a Normal team in the Frontier League.

"Any time you force an issue, sometimes things get missed," Lee said. "This has been a pretty tight time crunch to begin with, and there's still an awful lot to do. Could it be done in a year? Possibly. But what is best is probably to open in 2010.

"You always want to come out with your best foot forward. We want to do it right."

Northern League commissioner Clark Griffith remained interested in Normal earlier on Tuesday.

"Of course," Griffith said. "We have great owners, a great ownership group and a very good business plan."

The six-team Northern League has three teams within relatively short distance of Normal (Joliet, Schaumburg and Gary, Ind.) and three much further away (Kansas City, Kan., Fargo-Moorhead, N.D., and Winnipeg, Manitoba).