Ballpark Figures : Sports: Between them, Hank and Ken Stickney of Orange County own three minor-league teams. They’ve done well at it, but it’s clearly a labor of love for the ‘ultimate baseball family.’

For decades, minor-league baseball was the dusty, no-name kid brother to star-studded major-league ball. Teams, bought and sold for as little as $10,000, provided little more than good, solid baseball and no-frills family fun.

All that changed in the 1980s. Investors, flush with the wealth of that decade, entered the market and put the nation’s 151 teams into the big time. The 1988 movie “Bull Durham” also enriched minor-league ball with a big Hollywood dose of romance and charisma.

Hank Stickney, 57, and his son Ken, 29, were among those investors. Each owns Class-A minor-league clubs--Hank, the San Bernardino Spirit; Ken, the Palm Springs Angels. And last August, the two pooled their resources, parlaying their earnings from those two clubs to buy the Triple-A Las Vegas Stars, paying a minor-league record $7 million for an organization one sports marketer said is “the crown jewel” of the minor leagues because of its growth potential, location, first-class stadium and talented management.

For the Stickneys, however, baseball has virtues beyond its profit potential. Rather, the game has served as the glue that has cemented the Stickneys into what Ken says is “the ultimate baseball family.” With their unaffected admiration for skillful ballplayers and their fondness for storytelling, they might be any father and son in the bleachers.

In Hank’s Cowan Heights living room, the baseball stories zing about like line drives. Dee, Hank’s wife, who has been there through it all, adds the color commentary.

There was the time, nearly 20 years ago, that a young Ken struck out all 18 batters in a six-inning Little League game. And the glorious day he hit a grand slam to win a game. (“It was my 15 minutes of fame,” Ken said. “I hit my athletic prowess at age 12, and it’s been downhill ever since.”)

And Ken’s first baseball memory, which he recalls vividly although he was just 5: older brother Doug, coached by Hank, playing a smart third base in an Ohio Little League championship game when the Stickneys lived in Cleveland. (After winning 15 games in a row, the team finally lost the Northeast title to Indiana.)

And the time that Hank, then an Air Force colonel, coached his sons on the Air Force Little League team that finally beat the Taipei city champions in Taiwan.

When he was growing up, Ken said, the household was all baseball.

“Dad coached us, and Mom never missed a practice or a game,” he said. “When we weren’t playing Whiffleball in the front yard, it was baseball in the back yard. When we broke a window, we’d turn to softball for a while.”

It is this participation in the sport that has helped the Stickneys succeed in the business side of the game, says Roy Englebreckt, a part owner of the San Bernardino Spirit and a former promotions manager for the Great Western Forum in Inglewood.

“They’re longtime sports fans and baseball fans, and that helps,” he said, adding that team owners without baseball backgrounds don’t know how to exploit the family-entertainment aspect of the game.

“Hank’s success with the San Bernardino team means he knows how to sell the sizzle, sell the excitement, and that’s the key in minor league baseball,” he said.

Hank’s involvement with baseball has been lifelong. As a boy, he said, he would play from 6 a.m. till dinner time, and he would fix up time-worn balls with electrical tape. Baseball was his game in high school and college, and as a youth, he worked the turnstiles at Cleveland Stadium so he could see every game of the 1948 World Series.

In the Air Force he turned to softball, then to Little League. As an Air Force family always on the move, Dee recalled, “we were a bunch of vagabonds.” But no matter where the duty, be it Taiwan or Germany, Hank would quickly organize a base Little League.

When the chance to invest in minor league teams came their way, the Stickneys stepped up to the plate. The Ventura Spirit moved to San Bernardino in 1986, and Hank and Doug became investors soon after, using $125,000 in savings to buy about a third of the shares in the team.

“We read an article in the paper that said baseball may be coming to San Bernardino,” Ken said. “I kept bugging Hank to call about it, because we’d always kicked around the idea of owning a team.”

Although Ken did not buy into that team, last year he and some friends pooled $1 million in savings to buy the Palm Springs Angels.

About three-quarters of all minor-league teams are owned by individuals, but only a few of those own more than one team, Ken said.

What’s even more unusual about the Stickneys is that even though they paid premium prices for their teams, they work full time at jobs unrelated to baseball--both are employed by health-care companies--and allow team management to be performed by associates.

“We bought (the teams) out of love for the game,” Ken said. “For the returns you get, you could do better in terms of an investment. For me it’s a hobby, an investment for my kids.”

Next season, the San Bernardino team will move to a new $7.5-million stadium in Rancho Cucamonga and be known as the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. A record 800 season tickets have already been sold, many of them to loyal fans from San Bernardino, Hank said.

The Stickneys’ recent purchase of the Las Vegas Stars gives them three minor-league teams within an hour’s flying time of Southern California.

The Las Vegas organization, according to Englebreckt, is the “crown jewel of Triple-A baseball. The stadium has all the creature comforts. Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing areas in the country, and it has no other competition” from other ballparks.

Although a full-time general manager will run the day-to-day operations, Hank will set overall policy and “watch where the money goes” while Ken works on strategies to boost attendance.

One of the Stickneys’ immediate goals is to contact convention organizers and persuade them to encourage their attendees to spend an evening at the ballpark.

“Each week in Vegas there are 12 to 18 conventions with over 5,000 people,” Ken said. “Say they schedule a four- or five-day convention. Instead of gambling or going to shows every night, they can buy a $15 ticket that will give them admission, two hot dogs, beers and transportation to the ballpark.”

Because the Stickney family is so close, it is perhaps no coincidence that Hank and Ken work right across a parking lot from each other.

“We talk at least once a day,” Ken said. “We share promotional ideas and information daily. We like each other and have fun.”

Said Dee, who should know: “Baseball people have more fun than normal people. They’re fun people. And,” she added, with surprising seriousness, “it’s a good thing we love hot dogs and popcorn.”