Are Triad heavy hitters way out in left field?

• Position: North Carolina's Major League Baseball team

If you build it, will they come?

When you're talking about bringing major-league baseball to the Triad, boosters may be playing in a field of dreams no matter how much support they build. C'mon ... a big-league club in Kernersville? Get real.

"People said the same thing when Atlanta started to pursue the Olympics - and when Charlotte started to pursue professional football," says Walter McDowell, president of Winston-Salem-based Wachovia Bank of North Carolina. "Governor Hunt doesn't think it's ludicrous."

Neither does a 21-member committee of prominent Triad businessmen formed to rally support for a franchise. The North Carolina Baseball Committee is loaded with, er, power hitters. Besides McDowell, the lineup includes David Stonecipher, chairman of Jefferson-Pilot Corp.; Dave Hunt, managing partner of Arthur Andersen's Greensboro office; and Don Beaver, owner of four minor-league clubs.

The committee will load you up with statistics that say the market has the population to support a team. But that won't make a believer of George Shinn. "Just common sense tells you it won't work," says the owner of the Charlotte Hornets NBA team and the minor-league Charlotte Knights. "Major-league baseball, playing so many games, has to be played in a big market." The Triad, he says, faces the same problem as any other Tar Heel city: He's...