'Welcome to the Circus of Baseball' author pitches the minor leagues as America's true pastime

<p>1994 was a notable year in American sports. The <a href="https://www.hockey-reference.com/playoffs/1994-new-york-rangers-vs-vancouver-canucks-stanley-cup-final.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">New York Rangers</a> took home the Stanley Cup, Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan was violently attacked on the ice (the culprit later identified as an associate of competing skater Tonya Harding), and Major League Baseball’s <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mlb-cancels-world-series" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World Series</a> was canceled.<br> <br> But over with the minor league team, the Asheville Tourists in North Carolina, a young Ryan McGee was living his best life. <br> <br> “My dream then was to be a radio play-by-play guy," McGee said. "In the Carolinas, I'm the guy that would go as a teenager and sit in my father's car and twist the AM radio dial, just looking for teams…Unfortunately, my accent is what it is. And in 1994, everyone was supposed to sound like Tom Brokaw. And that's not what I sounded like. But I did land an internship with the Tourists, with the hope of perhaps maybe becoming the voice of the Asheville Tourists.”<br> <br> McGee jumped at the chance to work for $100 a week as an intern for the team. A budding sports journalist, McGee was already an ardent baseball fan, with a special passion for baseball’s minor leagues.<br> <br> Today, he's a well-known writer for ESPN, but his new book recounts his harrowing and hilarious experiences that summer — including some that almost cut his career short. Pulling out the tarp to cover the field on rainy days was especially perilous, he says:<br> <br> “When you go to a game at Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium and they pull the tarp, they have dozens of people pulling this giant, heavy, rain-proof cover for the entire ballpark infield. And when you have dozens of people, it's beautiful, right? Well, at a minor league ball park, sometimes we had four people to do this while we were in a downpour. And as a result, sometimes the