Milton Bradley’s game

The enormously talented, if sometimes mercurial, Milton Bradley launches one of the greatest home runs in baseball history 25 years ago today – lining a two-out, two-strike grand slam to right-center off Joe Lisio in the bottom of the ninth to lift the Harrisburg Senators over Norwich 12-11 in the fifth and deciding game of the Class AA Eastern League finals.

The straight-out-of-Hollywood finish – forever captured on film by team photographer Steve Eddy – comes on a rainy, misty and altogether surreal night on City Island and gives Harrisburg an Eastern League-record fourth straight title.

“I hit the ball,” Bradley says after the game, “and then it seemed real quiet. Kind of like The Twilight Zone.”

Alas, on the 10th anniversary of authoring the greatest single moment on Harrisburg’s City Island since the place first opens for baseball in 1890, Bradley is suspended by the Chicago Cubs for the rest of 2009 season for publicly criticizing the team.

Bradley ends up playing 12 seasons in the major leagues, batting .271 during the regular season and .310 in the playoffs with four homers in 11 postseason games.

He also starts as the designated hitter for the American League in the 2008 All-Star Game, the final one played at the original Yankee Stadium.