A minor miracle.

• Author: Schley, Stewart

TYLER TYSDAL SHOWED A KNACK FOR WORKING THE business side of baseball early in life. As a teenager in North Platte, Neb., he hired neighborhood pals to tear through packages of bulk-order baseball cards, separating out marquee players.

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Normal kids of the era might have swapped the occasional Dale Murphy card for a good-condition Mike Schmidt and called it a "trade." Tysdal marked up the price for a 1984 George Brett, peddled it to a fan in Kansas City by mail-order, and called it "regional arbitrage." When he was 14, he cleared $14,000. "Put myself through college," Tysdal says.

No surprise, then, that Tysdal is back in the baseball business in a big way. As the president of Denver-based National Sports Services, Tysdal is leading an investment renaissance in the once-neglected professional sport of minor league baseball.

He may be onto something. Turns out that while you and I were overpaying for tickets, hot dogs and beer at Coors Field, the real action was going on in places like El Paso, Texas, and Asheville, N.C., where a new wave of owners and more sophisticated management practices are introducing an unfamiliar element to minor-league baseball: profit.

Yes, sports fans, behind all the goofy stunts and romanticized luster of minor league ball is a real business.

Revenues have nearly doubled over the last 10 years to nearly $500 million across both independent and Major League Baseball-affiliated leagues. Nearly 100 new ballparks have been built since 1990. And some minor-league franchises are now valued as high as $20 million (although $5 million is a more typical number).

With fan support growing and salaries in some leagues capped at a slim $120,000 per team, it's possible to produce a solid operating profit even with ticket prices and sponsorship rates that are a fraction of what prevails in the big leagues, says Allen Fears, the former Denver Broncos chief financial officer who now holds the same title at NSS.

That's certainly the hope of Tysdal and his partners at NSS, which operates as a sort of central casting agency for team owners. NSS supplies investment capital, marketing and sales help, facilities construction oversight and just about anything else an owner might need.

"That's really the idea behind it. Not only are they doing this for their own teams, but they offer all this expertise to owners who have been adrift for a long time," says Rick Hanson, the founder of the Denver graphic design firm The...