(FORTUNE Magazine) – When you talk baseball, professional teams called the Lugnuts, the Lumberjacks, the Quakes, the River Dogs, and the Rock Cats don't instantly spring to mind. But these outfits, among 230 minor-league teams playing their hearts out from coast to coast, are part of a bush-league renaissance. The minors were on the verge of striking out in the early 1970s, when attendance slumped to ten million. Today towns and suburbs are sprouting modern, fan-friendly stadiums with picnic pavilions, playgrounds, and field boxes planted virtually on the diamond. Almost half of the 180 major-league-affiliated farm clubs are playing in stadiums built in the past decade. So are most of the 50 teams that lack a parent in the Show (as the big leagues are called). The new stadiums, which generally seat between 5,000 and 7,000 people, offer cheap seats ($2 to $8), cheap hot dogs, promotional giveaways, and nonstop between-innings entertainment. If you want to see people race wearing flippers, a minor-league game is the place to go. There's even a pretty good ball game to watch. Whatever--Americans are hooked. Some 45 million fans will get their baseball fix this summer at minor-league games.

What's behind the resurgence of the minors? Lots of things, such as movies like Bull Durham (1988), disgust at the 1994 baseball strike, and worries about parking, prices, and rowdiness at big-league stadiums. "I can take a hundred customers to a game, buy them tickets, drinks, and dinner for less than $1,000," says New Haven Ravens fan Tony Cortiglio, an account manager for a lighting company. "And they all love it."

States and cities have done their bit, building minor-league stadiums as part of urban-development strategies. That has been particularly common in the Northeast, which is being peppered with new teams with the frequency of batting-practice home runs. Newark's $34 million Riverfront Stadium, the costliest minor-league ballpark in America, is the jewel in this crown. Connecticut has jump-started three teams--the Bridgeport Bluefish, the Norwich Navigators, and the New Britain Rock Cats. New York City is building a new stadium on Staten Island; another is on the drawing boards for Coney Island. Whether this is a wise economic strategy is debatable, but the new parks sure are pretty.

The major leagues also helped out their farmhands. In 1990 they adopted the Facilities Standards Rule, spelling out what minor-league stadiums should look like, from the size of the playing field to the number of toilets. The requirements, which improved conditions for both fans and players--no more collapsing stands and cold-water showers--are now mandatory for big-league farm teams. (Almost all the independents also comply.)

Most important of all, though, is that the management of minor-league teams has improved. Corporate leaders like Dan Burke, the former CEO of Cap Cities/ABC, who owns the Portland (Maine) Sea Dogs, and Floyd Hall, the recently retired chairman of Kmart, who owns the New Jersey Jackals, moved into the business in pursuit of a boyhood dream. They brought with them sophisticated management skills. In general, minor-league teams came to realize that to make serious money in the bushes, they'd have to attract nonbaseball fanatics. So they began to sell the game as a wholesome night out with the kids, with a little baseball thrown in. Indeed, in many parks the performance on the field appears to have been inspired more by Walt Disney than Abner Doubleday.

In a typical minor-league contest, Little League teams swarm onto the field to take a bow before the game, while the players canvass the crowd to sign autographs. (Sometimes it's hard to tell who is more thrilled--the players signing baseballs and scorecards or the awestruck little fans collecting them.) Between innings, the games are embellished with clumsy mascots racing tiny tots around the bases (the mascot always loses), "dizzy bat races," and the like. And after the game, for those who stay on--"half the fans," notes Steve Kalafer, owner of the Somerset (N.J.) Patriots, "leave during the seventh-inning stretch to put the kids to bed"--fireworks are often the final treat.

Most of the hoopla is paid for by sponsors. Still, owning a minor-league team is a struggle. Farm teams that have a major-league connection are owned by individuals, but they have to accept the players and coaches allocated from above. (Independents, of course, find their own talent.) On a very good night, a game grosses perhaps $80,000, a fraction of what the Yankees pay Roger Clemens to warm up. Most teams make a small profit, but the payoff comes only when teams are sold. As the minor leagues milk their popularity, the franchises are soaring in value. A double-A franchise picked up for $250,000 in the 1970s is worth $5 million or more today.

Playing in the bushes is also a struggle. Except for bonus babies and the occasional star sent down to recuperate from an injury, minor-leaguers live a meager existence. Players typically travel on buses, not aircraft. They stay in budget hotels, not in five-star elegance. In the independent leagues, the top salary is $3,000 a month, and some players make a fraction of that.

While spectators may regard the minor leagues as a heartwarming reimmersion in the pleasures of this pastoral game, for players they are a Darwinian world in which every year a new draft of talent comes in to weed out the weak, the old, and the slow. All have their eyes on the prize: the Show. Perhaps one in ten will get the proverbial cup of coffee in the majors.

"Once baseball gets in your blood, you can't get it out," says 36-year-old designated hitter Jeff Manto of the Buffalo Bisons, a team that has frequently attracted more than a million fans a season to its stunning, 21,000-seat ballpark. Manto has the dubious distinction of having hit the most home runs in the minors (200-plus) and has done stints with the Red Sox, Orioles, Mariners, Rockies, Tigers, and Yankees, as well as with the Bisons' parent club, the Indians. In 282 games in the big leagues, he has hit .226, with 30 home runs and 93 runs batted in--and would dearly like to add to those numbers.

That hope springs eternal in the hearts of rookies and veterans, coaches and managers. "Behind the boom in minor-league baseball are many broken dreams," muses David McConnell, headmaster of a high school in Maine and head usher for the Portland Sea Dogs: "players who won't ever make it to the Show and owners who thought there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in center field."