Somewhere between the well-thrown snowballs, the misguided AAs and the showers of boos, there is a place.
There is a place where dreams have been shattered, arms have been broken, midshipmen have fallen and drunks have been convicted. There is a place where you can see your heroes of yesteryear honored one afternoon, only to watch a football game cancelled the next night when Ray Lewis disappears into a seam in the turf. There is a place with more cracks than a plumbers’ convention and even less sex appeal.
Somewhere in South Philadelphia, there is a place that I will miss very much.
It may not be as fancy as Gillette Stadium, and it certainly doesn’t have the history and charm of Fenway Park, but in a demented and sick sort of way, Veterans Stadium will always hold a place in every Philadelphian’s heart.
When I first saw “The Vet,” I was about three feet tall and had eyes wide enough to scan the vast sea of red and yellow seats in a single pass. I sat and watched my Phillies field grounders that bounced off the turf faster than the superball Mom was always taking away from me, and saw them hit long fly balls that got lost somewhere between the plastic outfield fence and the trash bag covering the façade behind the bullpen.
But I didn’t notice any of that. I noticed the hits, the runs, the errors (especially the errors) and the elusive hot dog vendor that seemed to always skip my section. All I knew was that I had a better chance for a foul ball in my seat down the third-base line with John Kruk at the plate and that even in a loss (there were many), there would always be cotton candy at the seventh-inning stretch.
Yes, all of these warm memories occurred at Veterans Stadium – the massive hunk of concrete that will make way for a massive expanse of blacktop when it is imploded sometime this spring. And yes, I have heard all the stories, and even experienced a few myself.
Yes, Santa got booed. Yes, he also got hit with snowballs. Yes, a game was delayed because Cardinals’ outfielder J.D. Drew didn’t wear his battery-repellent cap. Yes, Michael Irvin was cheered as he lay motionless on the field. Yes, a squadron of Navy Midshipmen was nearly killed when a railing collapsed. Yes, a football game was cancelled because the turf had small canyons in it. Yes, there was a judge stationed in the building’s basement. And yes, there was a holding cell nearby for you to wait in.
But Santa looked like he was drunk, Drew is lucky he wasn’t there on free-bat night, Irvin played for the Cowboys, those Navy guys should not have been leaning there, we didn’t want to play the Ravens anyway and the judge probably bribed some people to get that prime seat. And oh yeah, that cell is the place to see and be seen in the city.
There is a story about the Eagles’ fan that organized a snowball ambush on Cowboys’ coach Jimmy Johnson. The fan was a young Philadelphia lawyer with a seat in the 500 level. He organized his section, and then gave the signal to open fire on Johnson’s slicked-back hair as he ran into the tunnel.
That fan’s name was Ed Rendell. He would go on to be the mayor of Philadelphia and is the current governor of Pennsylvania.
Say what you want about Philly fans, but we don’t pull any punches. If we don’t like what you’re doing, then you’ll know it. And no matter whether you’re being paid $10 or $10 million, we can smell lack of effort from Section 735, Row 28, Seat 6. Even the urine-filled sinks and stale, sticky beer can’t drown out laziness.
And if we let you stay here long enough, you may just grow to love it. Take Donovan McNabb for example. Here’s a man who, while shaking the commissioner’s hand on draft day, had to stare into a bus-load of green-clad Eagles’ fans who made the trip with the sole intention of booing him. But as McNabb has said on numerous occasions since, he understood that the fans were not booing him, but were booing the absence of Ricky Williams’ name in the No. 2 slot. Two NFC title games later, McNabb, Philly’s most [brotherly] loved sports figure, was booed on opening night in his new house. And he knew he deserved it.
Oh yeah, and he also signed a 12-year contract extension last fall.
This is a football town. It has always been a football town and will always be a football town. Why else would a baseball team play 32 seasons in a football stadium? Because the Phillies know their place and they know their role. They give us a welcome distraction for those summer months as we countdown to Eagles training camp. They give us a sunny July afternoon and they give us Dollar Dog Day (perhaps the greatest creation since the pig was invented). And maybe, just maybe, if they’re still in the pennant race when August rolls around, we will keep an eye on them – at least through midnight green-colored glasses.
The highlight of the summer for most Philly fans was not that crucial four-game series against the Braves or even the beloved Vet fireworks show. Somewhere between weekend trips to the shore and that Friday afternoon bottle of Yuengling that seems too cold to be possible, fans found time to get in line for Eagles’ single-game tickets. At the Vet, there were only a few thousand available for each game. That’s what happens when you have a 15-year season ticket waiting list.
As the fans lined up on the concrete ramps surrounding the prison-like behemoth, a sort of unspoken order arose. People don’t cut in line, they don’t argue over who got there first, they simply respect the fact that there is at least one person who beat them to it. And when Head Coach Andy Reid made his annual visit to the waiting fans, it almost made the waiting seem like a walk in the park (if that park were covered with FieldTurf and lined with concrete trees).
Sure, the new digs are nice. For $512 million (Eagles) and $346 million (Phillies), they damn well better be. But will they have a star to mark the spot where Willie Stargell hit a ball that may still be rising? Will they have the rowdies in the 700 level that make even Warren Sapp cringe with fear? And most importantly, will they have the sticky concrete floors, the sinks low enough to relieve yourself in or the turf so hard that former Eagles’ quarterback Ron Jaworski used to say it was like playing on “concrete with a green bed sheet over it?”
I will miss the $7 general admission seat that could become a $35 field level box seat if you had a sharp-enough pair of eyes and a brave-enough demeanor with the ushers. I will miss the seventh-inning stretch wedding proposals and the chance to touch the outfield wall while watching the fireworks from the warning track. I will miss those dollar dogs and even the $5 large sodas. And one can only wonder if the new nests will provide us with the one thing we long for most.
That perfect throwing angle.
Steve Moore is the Managing Editor of The Daily Free Press.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
