From the first "Play ball!" of each spring through the hot days 
of summer, minor-league teams across the nation give local fans 
a chance to relax and enjoy the national pastime, to preview 
tomorrow's stars, and to "root, root, root for the home team."
  
    In this story of professional baseball in the Alamo City from
1888 to the present, San Antonio Express-News sportswriter 
David King hits the highlights—athletic and human—that have 
filled the city's diamonds for 115 years. He tells about the team
that left Austin on a road trip and never returned—deciding to
make San Antonio its home base instead; about San Antonio's 
first two black Texas League players, whose story was less 
dramatic but no less difficult than Jackie Robinson's; about 
Harry Ables, the "freak of nature" who holds the league's oldest 
single-season record, 310 strikeouts in 1910; and about the 
longest scoreless game in professional baseball history, the 25-
inning duel against the Jackson Mets at V. J. Keefe Field in 
1988.
 
   King not only tells the stories that have driven the nation's 
fascination with baseball but also gives box scores and baseball 
statistics. Through losing seasons and the 2002 Texas League 
Championship alike, his stories and stats will occupy fans 
waiting for the next ump to call "Steeerike three!"

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DAVID KING, who lives in New Braunfels, Texas, is a sportswriter 
for the San Antonio Express-News. He won the Texas Headliners 
Foundation award for sports news reporting in 2002.