On March 31, 1998, more than 48,500 fans cheered the arrival of Major League Baseball's newest expansion team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. In the first book ever to chronicle the birth of a major-league baseball franchise from conception to Opening Day, <I>Big League, Big Time</I> takes you inside the Diamondbacks dugout -- and their corporate suite -- to examine the billion-dollar business of baseball and its enormous impact on our culture. <P> While many prominent people went to bat for baseball in Phoenix, sports entrepreneur Jerry Colangelo, the Diamondbacks' managing general partner, swung for the fences and scored a league-envious, $355 million state-of-the-art baseball facility. <I>Big League, Big Time</I> discloses how Colangelo's revolutionary vision for the Diamondbacks affected all aspects of the club -- especially his choice of personnel, from Jay Bell and Andy Benes to former Yankees manager Buck Showalter, "a young man with old-fashioned ideas." <P> But even before they had drafted a player, the Diamondbacks front office was well aware that marketing "The Show" was the off-the-field game they couldn't afford to lose. Read the inside story of how they chose the team's name and colors, successfully maneuvered multimillion-dollar deals with a host of major sponsors, determinedly wooed the vast Mexican market, attracted such celebrity coinvestors as Billy Crystal and Lou Gosset, Jr., and became one of the five highest revenue-producing franchises before a single game was played. <P> Complete with player profiles, an exclusive inside-the-war-room took at the expansion draft, and a dissection of the media's role in the global growth of the sports industry, <I>Big League, Big Time</I> is a rare glimpse into the politics, business, and promise of baseball -- a fascinating analysis of how one city cultivated a very special field of dreams.