Still Available ... The Class of '93

There have been thousands of minor league baseball teams since the start of the 20th century. Which one was the best ever, well, that always has been open to debate. There is one team that needs to be included in any argument.

That team would be the 1993 Harrisburg Senators, a collection of top prospects the talent-rich Montreal Expos put together in one place at one time to see what would happen.

Would they dominate the Eastern League, a Class AA league annually filled with some of baseball's best prospects? Or would they collapse under the weight of their egos and others' expectations?

No one truly knew coming out of spring training that season.

The game's history, regardless of level, has been loaded with dream teams that inexplicably turned into nightmares before season's end.

The 1993 Harrisburg Senators were such a dream team, a team that trashed an entire league on its way to a championship.

The Class of '93 is their story, of how a bunch of alpha males checked their egos at the clubhouse door and turned their own expectations into reality.

Take a Peek Inside

Here's a sample of what The Class of '93 is all about:

• Introduction
• Before The 'Burg
• Kirk's Final Frontier
• Rondell's Reckoning

Order Your Copies Today!

Item

Class Of '93 (1 copy) $16.00 USD Clippings (1 copy) $12.00 USD One Patch of Grass (1 copy) $13.00 USD

For more information on bulk purchases, email us at raindelay8@aol.com or call (717) 979-4948.

Shipping and handling is only $4.95, no matter how many books you order!

The 2012 book One Patch of Grass by award-winning Andrew Linker takes a peek into the lives of the Hall of Famers, all-stars, no-stars, wanna-bes and never-weres who since 1890 have summered on a baseball field in the middle of Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River.

That book was filled with in-depth stories trumpeting the careers of Hall of Famers from the past in Oscar Charleston and of the future in Vladimir Guerrero, while also chronicling the lives of those whose careers in the game were derailed by racism, politics and injuries.

Clippings, published in 2013, isn't like that.

Mostly because this is a book devoid of stories.

Clippings is a companion piece for One Patch of Grass, a chance to augment Harrisburg's free-flowing baseball history presented in that book with a plethora of quotes, notes, milestone dates and some anecdotes -- nearly 1,300 in all -- that could not be squeezed into the first book.

Basically, it's a slice of cold pizza in the morning and, really, who doesn't like a slice of cold pizza in the morning?

Take a Peek Inside

For more on Clippings, here's a peek or two.

For more than 100 years, minor league baseball has been played in hundreds of cities, towns and 'burgs from Maine to California. And, every one of those cities, towns and 'burgs from Orchard Park to Rancho Cucamonga has shared a commonality of great moments on the field, oddball occurrences off the field and encounters with hundreds of players who have passed through on their way either to starring in the major leagues or, more likely, to toiling in 9-to-5 jobs in the real world.

Only one place can claim a uniqueness of its own, a place where one-of-a-kind moments have occurred on the same patch of grass since 1890.

The place: City Island, a 63-acre parcel of land that sits in the Susquehanna River, a short walk from downtown Harrisburg to the grandstand behind home plate. Fans today can look upon a field where, plus or minus a foot or two in location and elevation, baseball has been played in the same spot as it was in 1890, when Frank Grant and Hughie Jennings became the first pair of black-and-white teammates who eventually were inducted into the Hall of Fame; in 1928, when Babe Ruth umpired a kids' game in the afternoon before homering on the same field later that day; in 1952, when Eleanor Engle became the first woman to sign a pro baseball contract; and in 1999, when Milton Bradley – the player, not the board game company – launched a Hollywood moment of a homer that was beyond anything Bernard Malamud ever conceived for his fictional Roy Hobbs.

Their stories, and dozens more, are profiled in the book One Patch of Grass.