Riverside Stadium

Harrisburg Pennsylvania

Former Home of the Harrisburg Senators
This gallery of course isn't about either historic Island Park or the beautiful new Metro Bank Park. It is about this thing... Riverside Stadium. So here we go... The team that would become the new Harrisburg Senators, had been playing at the historic Holman Stadium in Nashua New Hampshire. The team was owned by the Pittsburgh Pirates and when they moved to Harrisburg, the new Harrisburg Senators maintained their running 6 year PDC with the Pittsburgh organization. The new Riverside Stadium franchise wouldn’t produce any All-Stars but would yield quite a few impact players including 11 year MLB veteran of the Pirates, Jeff King (.240), 10 year MLB vet, Felix Fermin (.268), Rafael Belliard (.338) who played for the Pirates and Braves for a very 17 Major League seasons and Catcher Tom Prince (.307) who matched that 17 year MLB career with the Pirates and Dodgers. Perhaps no one in the history of the team however, would come close to putting on a show the way future Braves 1st Baseman Tommy Gregg did. Gregg had a season that would go down in the history of this stadium’s existence as he hit 22 2B, 9 3B, 10 HR, stole 35 bases and hit a whopping .371. Unfortunately he was never able to come close to those numbers in the Majors, but he still had a fine 8 year MLB career. On the mound, Rich Sauveur (13-6, 2.86) was the best of the bunch, while closer Brett Gideon 4-3-12 Sv, 1.98 served as closer. This impact player laden team also featured Lance Belen (18 2B, 15 HR, 93 RBI, .290) and Jim Reboulet (.319, 52 SB) who played solid baseball all season long. With a roster that was certainly impressive, the Senators drew 212,000 fans in their first season to the ugly new ballpark, and finished in 2nd place with a 77-65 record, making the playoffs. They immediately went on a tear in the post-season and wound up pulling a coup beating out Reading in the 1st round, 3 games to 2. They then went to Vermont who would also put up quite a fight… but in 5 games the Senators came out victorious, winning the Eastern League Championship in their very first season. The previous incarnation of the Harrisburg Senators of 1907-1952 had won 8 Championships during their Minor League tenure. 212,000 came to see the Senators win it all in their inaugural year.