A Three Team Town — Blake Fontenay

Baseball is a kids' game - but if adults and big money are involved, the stakes get a lot higher than they are on the sandlot. When Major League Baseball puts out a call for a city interested in hosting a new team, Nashville Mayor Kent Gables follows the suggestion of an eccentric ex-ballplayer and a mysterious group of would-be owners to submit a bid. As Gables sees it, landing a Major League team would vault Nashville into the ranks of top tier cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Matters quickly get complicated, though. Skip Goodman, Orlando's mayor and a bitter personal rival of Gables, wants to one-up Nashville by getting the team for his town. Also, Nashville's plans come under attack by political opponents â€" including a shadowy group willing to use everything from Silly String to sabotage to prevent taxpayer money from being spent on a new stadium. Goodman and Orlando seem to be on their way to getting the team and the civic bragging rights that go with it, until Horton Edison, Gables' rumpled and world-weary chief of staff, starts to work his magic. What no one in Nashville or Orlando realizes is that Major League Baseball's commissioner is harboring a dark secret more jarring than two players colliding at home plate. Edison and Iris Moon, a beautiful economist he befriends, may be the only ones who can piece together what's happening before it's too late…