Life's a pitch.

• Author: Leggett, Page

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Nursing-home mogul Don Beaver waited a decade and a half for a center-city Charlotte ballpark. The payoff for his persistence: one of the nation's most successful minor league baseball franchises.

Don Beaver isn't one to hold a grudge. He could sit in his owner's suite in the BB&T Ballpark he helped create and think about the 15 years of hassles, roadblocks and lawsuits that threatened to derail his dream.

He could view Jerry Reese, responsible for much of the stalling, as a villain and savor the sweetness of defeating a determined opponent. Instead, when the Charlotte Knights owner watches his Triple-A baseball team--as he does eight to 10 times a season--he's thinking about just one thing: the game.

Beaver, 76, and a grandfather of 13, has been baseball-obsessed since he was a kid. While growing up in Mooresville, he pitched in the 1952 Little League World Series. He owns the Hickory Crawdads and half of the New Orleans Zephyrs, is part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates and tried to bring Major League Baseball to the Triad in the late '90s. He's no longer pursuing that goal, but believes North Carolina will make it to the majors, just not for another 10 to 20 years.

He doesn't bemoan that--there's no crying in baseball--and it's easier to accept that defeat since his other big dream, baseball in uptown Charlotte, came true in April 2014. The bumpy road began in 1997, when Beaver paid George Shinn $10 million for the misnamed "Charlotte" Knights. Shinn had moved the team to Fort Mill, S.C., which Beaver describes as "always the wrong location. You had to fight traffic on I-77--and usually at rush hour--just to get there."

The team was also a loser financially: Beaver estimates he had operating losses totaling $2 million during the 16 years he operated in Fort Mill. Attendance consistently ranked at or near the bottom among Triple-A franchises, including a last-place finish in 2013.

That changed in a hurry in 2014 after the Knights signed a 49-year lease for a downtown stadium and arranged a lucrative incentive package with local lawmakers. Now in their third season at BB&T Ballpark, the Knights lead Minor League Baseball in attendance, about 9,000 per game, and have scored 75 sellouts, including 13 this year through mid-June. Beaver doesn't disclose the team's finances, but the rival Indianapolis Indians' annual report suggests he may have already recouped his South Carolina losses. With the second-highest minor league attendance after the Knights, the Indians had net income of $1.6 million on revenue of $12.7 million in 2014. Based on recent sales of Triple-A teams, the Knights are worth more than $30 million, sports-industry investment banker Larry Grimes says. "It's amazing how a new stadium can energize a fan base," he adds. More important for city and county officials, the ballpark has helped spark hundreds of millions of dollars of...