It's a hit.

• Author: Campbell, Spencer
• Position: PICTURE THIS - Charlotte Knights toward constructing stadium

Minor-league baseball bounces back to Charlotte and debuts a downtown stadium to a sell-out crowd. Can it keep 'em coming?

The Charlotte Knights won its 2014 home opener in 2012. That's when the club persuaded the City Council to pay $8 million toward construction of a $54 million stadium downtown. (Mecklenburg County already had agreed to pitch in that amount.) Across the state line in suburban Fort Mill, S.C., where the team had played home games since 1990, the Knights drew about a quarter of a million people each year, less than half what the league leader attracted. Moving downtown, a team-purchased study predicted, would boost attendance to 600,000. So far, so good. The Knights--Chicago White Sox's Triple-A affiliate--opened 10,200-capacity BB&T Ballpark April 11. Tickets, which ranged from $8 to $18, sold out in two hours.

The Knights surpassed last year's paid attendance before the first pitch was thrown by selling more than 5,000 season tickets, five times last year's total. That's a guaranteed draw of more than 350,000. "Now we just have to sell the other 5,000 seats," Chief Operating Officer Dan Rajkowski says. That wasn't a problem through the first eight home games, when attendance averaged 9,466. "That kind of fervor," UNC Charlotte sports economist Craig Depken says, "tends to decrease over time." But not much. Greensboro's and Winston-Salem's minor league teams opened downtown stadiums in 2005 and 2010, respectively. Attendance, which skyrocketed, has not declined much since. The Greensboro Grasshoppers' gate totaled 197,037 in 2004,407,711 in NewBridge Bank Park's first season and 362,274 last year. A similar trend occurred in Winston-Salem.

Though the Knights don't have to pay players--the White Sox covers that--it doesn't get TV money, unlike major league teams. The gate is...