Bonanza In The Bushes

Like Crash Davis, the aging catcher in the hit summer movie Bull Durham, most minor-league baseball players ache to make it to the big leagues but spend their careers taking bumpy bus rides between small-town ball parks. They are like writers who aspire to pen the Great American Novel but settle for scripting comic books: their lives are a compromise, an apology for what might have been.

The owners of the teams, though, are another story. All across the U.S., well-to-do baseball buffs are eager to buy up clubs with names like the Memphis Chicks, Montana's Butte Copper Kings and the...