How the White Roses morphed into The Revs
Fans reach out to touch the bat offered by a Rev.
The York Daily Record/Sunday News’ Jim Seip has been covering the York Revolution baseball team for months now.
He wrote the most incisive story of how the Revs came into being at the time of the team’s first game in Bridgeport, Conn., on May 6.
Here’s an excerpt:
During the 1940s and ’50s, Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Juan Marichal and Robin Roberts played against teams from York.
But nobody topped the hometown favorite, a skinny 18-year-old from Little Rock, Ark. Brooks Robinson may call Baltimore his home, but York adopted him after he made his professional baseball debut for the White Roses on June 3, 1955.
Robinson went on to earn the title of World’s Greatest Third Baseman, and Yorkers always let the out-of-towners know where he got his start.
York had also been on the cutting edge.
The largest crowd in York’s history of minor-league baseball gathered to watch the first outdoor game ever played on artificial turf in 1968. More than 6,000 fans watched York lose 5-3 to the Reading Phillies on a shiny green infield.
But that was so long ago.
And here’s the whole thing.
