Baseball
Three professional baseball teams compete in the South Central Pennsylvania area: the Harrisburg Senators, the Lancaster Barnstormers, and the York Revolution. The Senators are the oldest team of the three, with the current incarnation playing since 1987. The Barnstormers joined the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball in the 2005 season, and won the Championship Series in 2006. Following the success of Lancaster's entry, the Opening Day Partners ownership group added the York Revolution in 2007.
The three cities of Harrisburg, Lancaster, and York each had various baseball plans before settling with their current situations. Harrisburg was in the process of pursuing a AAA-level team, planning major renovations to Commerce Bank Park to bring it to the standards of the International League. However, with the independent teams in Lancaster and York, and the addition of the Lehigh Valley IronPigs in Allentown, the chances of AAA baseball coming to Harrisburg are rather slim.
The original Harrisburg Senators played in the Eastern League in 1924. Playing its home games at Island Field, the team won the league championship in the 1927, 1928, and 1931 seasons. The Senators played a few more seasons before flood waters destroyed Island Field in 1936, effectively ending Eastern League participation for fifty-one years. In 1940, Harrisburg gained an Interstate League team affiliated with the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, the team remained in the city only until 1943, when it moved to nearby York and renamed the York Pirates. The current Harrisburg Senators won the Eastern League championship in the 1987, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999 seasons.
Many decades before the formation of the Barnstormers and Revolution organizations, the cities of Lancaster and York battled for baseball supremacy in the "War of the Roses." The Lancaster Red Roses and the York White Roses both played in various leagues together, with some bitter rivalry. Both teams were eventually dissolved, leaving Lancaster and York without baseball for several decades.
The Lancaster Barnstormers arrived in 2005, the first baseball team in the city for 44 years. The Barnstormers won the Atlantic League Championship Series in 2006, defeating the Bridgeport Bluefish in the league's first four-game sweep in a championship. The York Revolution played its inaugural season in 2007, reigniting the "War of the Roses" rivalry with Lancaster. The Barnstormers and the Revolution both wear retro uniforms of the respective Red Roses and White Roses for some of the games played between them.
Read more about this topic: Sports In South Central Pennsylvania
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
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