Ultimate Baseball Road Trip (22 page)

“What if they don’t let me in?” he asked.

“I’ll leave you at the border and come back for you after the game,” Kevin said.

“No, I mean what if they won’t let me back into the States after our game?”

“Don’t worry. They’ll let you back in. It’s Canada. They let everyone in and they let everyone out,” Kevin said. Then, quite paradoxically, he launched into a lengthy story about one of his Seattle friends who had been turned away at the border on her way to Vancouver.

“I don’t have my Social Security card,” a post-9/11 Josh said, riffling through his wallet as he nearly veered off the road.

“Stop worrying,” Kevin said. “They’ll let you in.”

“Maybe we could do some role-playing,” Josh suggested. “You be the border guard. I’ll be me.”

“Come again?”

“Ask me some questions like he will. You know, just for practice.”

“I really don’t think this is necessary,” Kevin said. “They’ll ask us our names and where we’re headed and that will be it. It’s not like we’re trying to smuggle heroin in.”

“Heroin! I didn’t shave this morning,” Josh cried. “What if they think I look sketchy?”

“You don’t look sketchy.”

“I just have a feeling it’s going to be an ordeal,” Josh said.

And sure enough it was, no thanks to the two Wrigley Field chairs Josh had purchased in Chicago that were stashed in the Sebring’s back seat.

“What are those rusty old things?” the border guard asked, pointing to the chairs.

“Wrigley Field Stadium chairs, sir,” Josh stammered. “I have a certificate of authenticity for each one if you’d like to see.”

“Why do you have chairs from Wrigley Field in the back seat if you’re just going to Tronno for a day?” the guard asked, suspiciously.

Josh riffled through a folder of papers, looking for the two certificates of authenticity the Cubs had made up for the chairs. He handed the crumpled-up pieces of paper to the man and tried his best not to stutter. “B-b-b-because we’re on a baseball road trip, sir, collecting all sorts of stuff from ballparks and stadiums, taking pictures. You know … living the American, umm … North American … dream.”

“Yeah,” the guard said, mildly perturbed, after inspecting the documents. “Go on then. Just don’t get any ideas aboot the chairs at SkyDome.”

“I won’t, sir,” Josh said sincerely. “I swear.”

“Go on!”

“For a while I didn’t think they were going to let me in with the chairs,” Josh said after a mile of highway lay between the Sebring and the border.

“They let everyone in,” Kevin said.

“Except your friend?”

“Right, except for my friend Dana Hackett. For some reason, they thought she was sketchy.”

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES,
CITIZENS BANK PARK

I
n our baseball travels, we have learned a few things about ballparks, and the citizens that love them. One thing we’ve learned is that most teams that endured the “cookie-cutter/dome era” now have far superior places to enjoy the game. But we’ve also learned that those cities which once had intimate little green cathedrals nestled into neighborhoods prior to building their multi-use multiplex concrete abominations, have fared even better in reclaiming what they once had.

Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia may not be located in a quaint downtown neighborhood teeming with great places to go out before and after the game, but it lacks little else. Make no mistake: A game at CBP is as good as it gets. Though it appears ginormous from the parking lot of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, which is also the home of stadiums for the Eagles of the NFL and Flyers and 76ers of the NHL and NBA, respectively, the designers of this park went out of their way to make sure nearly every seat has a clear view of the game. Utilizing a stacked cantilever design for the upper decks, and a low-rising bowl design reminiscent of Shibe Park (aka Connie Mack Stadium), Citizens Bank Park may well offer the best views in all of baseball in a seat-by-seat comparison.

The seating capacity is just north of forty-three thousand, which isn’t small, but the ballpark would fit neatly inside of its predecessor, the sixty-two-thousand-plus-seat Veterans Stadium, with room to spare.

And the South Philadelphia Sports Complex is improving as well. While the expansive parking lots do not officially allow for tailgating, it’s difficult to stop the people in all twenty thousand cars (the maximum capacity of the parking lot) from eating or drinking before the game. And on the site where the old Spectrum used to be, in a parking lot between all three stadiums in the complex, is Philly Live, which provides mixed-use living, retail, and entertainment space and the sense of neighborhood that the area lacked for so long.

Upon first seeing the exterior of the ballpark, one is struck by the generous use of red brick and stone in the facade, the green copper roof, and the red steel used in the light towers and beam supports for the seating structure. At night, three smaller light towers encased in glass glow brilliantly at locations representing first base, third base, and home plate above the stadium. The four entrance plazas at the corners of the ballpark each present a unique aspect of Philadelphia’s history and culture.

The park’s architect was Ewing Cole Cherry Brott (ECCB) from Philadelphia, which teamed up with those giants of ballpark design fame, HOK Sport (now known as Populous). The use of classic elements from earlier Phillies ballparks gave Citizens Bank Park its distinctive and utterly Philadelphian feel. The use of red brick and brushed red steel girders combined with the blue seats ties the exterior and interior into one design. The “bowl style” seating of the lower level has an unusually low grade to it, and was inspired by similar seating at the Baker Bowl and Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium. The shape of the outfield fence, with its boxed-out irregular segment in left-center field, is also reminiscent of Shibe. Beyond the outfield walls, beautiful open views of the Center City skyline offer a wonderful backdrop for baseball. The batter’s eye is a very attractive ivy-covered wall, which though reminiscent of Wrigley, adds a unique and distinctive touch to the ballpark. To the right of the batter’s eye are banks of flower boxes that, surprisingly enough to us, we liked.

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the ballpark from a fan-experience point of view is Ashburn Alley, so named in honor of Hall of Famer and former broadcaster Richie “Whitey” Ashburn. Pretty clever putting an “alley” inside the ballpark, when none can be found in the sea of parking lots around the park. It’s a good thing Philadelphia’s ballpark was designed to offer the total gameday package, because there is still no real neighborhood surrounding the Sports Complex.

Under an agreement ratified by the City Council in December 2000, the city of Philadelphia agreed to provide $174 million toward the stadium’s price tag, with $172 million coming from private financing to account for the $346 million total cost of building Citizens Bank Park. Also approved by voters was a new stadium for the Eagles. Later, the city added the Spectrum II, now known as the Wells Fargo Center. The cost of the three new facilities was well over a billion dollars. That amount of cash seems to border on the ridiculous to sports fans like us, but considering they built all three for less than the price of the new Yankee Stadium, who are we to complain? At least Philadelphia owns the new ballpark and leases it to the team. In June 2003 Citizens Bank pledged $57.5 million over twenty-five years to secure the new park’s naming rights.

Phillies “phans” have been treated to a delightful game-day experience at their new home, both off the field and on it. The Phils seemed to have caught lightning in a bottle in their new home, enjoying a 103 percent capacity sellout rating. With Charlie Manuel at the helm, the Phillies became the pride of the NL East. After a disappointing playoff loss in 2007, they repeated as division champs in 2008 and won their first playoff series since 1993. Fueled by young players that the team developed from within their own farm system, such as Chase Utley, Cole Hamels, Ryan Howard, and Jimmy Rollins, the 2008 Phillies went on to capture the National League pennant when they defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers four games to one. Then, for just the second time in their 126-year history, the Phillies won the World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays behind the nearly unstoppable arm of Hamels, who was the Series MVP.

A touching moment came during the pregame ceremony of Game 1, as country star Tim McGraw placed some of the ashes of his father, Tug McGraw, in the dirt of the pitcher’s mound. Tug, you’ll remember, recorded the last out of the Phillies’1980 World Series victory, and died in 2004 of brain cancer. Tim McGraw then handed the ball to Steve Carlton, who delivered the ceremonial first pitch before a capacity-plus crowd of cheering Philly fans.

Though they made it to the Series again in 2009, the Phillies fell to the Yankees. In 2010 they fell in the NLCS to the eventual world champions, the San Francisco Giants.

These disappointments quickly turned to optimism, as the front office put together one of the toughest pitching lineups this side of the 1995 Atlanta Braves, when they brought Cliff Lee back to town, to go alongside Hamels, Roy Halladay, and Roy Oswalt. With Brad Lidge as their closer and the heart of their hitting and fielding crew intact, Philadelphia had plenty reason to be phanatical.

But the excitement at CBP during the 2011 season transcended mere wins and losses. On a spring night in May, ESPN was broadcasting its Sunday Night game from the Phillies’ ballpark when news started to spread that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a team of US Navy SEALS in Pakistan. In a spontaneous outburst of patriotic exuberance, the Philadelphia fans broke into a chant of “U-S-A, U-S-A” that reverberated throughout the ballpark during the ninth inning of a game that eventually went fourteen frames before the Phillies finally bowed to the Mets.

The Phillies’ recent success stands in stark contrast to their fortunes over the previous century and a quarter, which were nothing short of heart-wrenching during much of that period. For thirty-three seasons, the Phillies played at Veterans Stadium, which was located in the next parking lot over from where CBP now resides. They shared the facility with the Eagles, and baseball fans suffered the same fate as
mixed-use facility teams across the land. The stadium wasn’t bad for football, but was awful for baseball.

The Vet was the largest baseball stadium in the National League (not including the year the Colorado Rockies played at Mile High Stadium), with a seating capacity in excess of sixty-two thousand, and was one of the worst places to experience a baseball game. The stadium itself looked like a gigantic air filter flung from the road trip mobile, lying alone and dejected in an empty parking lot.

With its octorad (an architect’s term derived from combining “octagon” and “radius”) shape, the facility was completed in 1971, four years after its groundbreaking. The Opening Day crowd of 55,352 represented the largest baseball crowd in the history of Pennsylvania. The Phils’ Larry Bowa recorded the stadium’s first hit.

Considering the gimmicks and odd promotions the Phillies featured throughout the Vet era, it seems likely that the team realized from the outset that the stadium was lacking when morphed from football grid into baseball diamond. Don’t get us wrong, we like teams to take a proactive approach to improving their digs. But it seemed in this case that the team’s marketing efforts were, at least in part, designed to keep fans from thinking too much about just how bad baseball at the Vet could be. Known for having the hardest turf in the history of the Major Leagues, the Vet had a demoralizing outline of the football gridiron always visible across the expanse of the outfield. In this city known for its cheesesteaks, the Phillies really trotted out the cheese—as in cheesy—at the start of each season. Before the inaugural baseball game on April 10, 1971, a helicopter dropped the ceremonial first pitch as it hovered high above. Though he stumbled a bit tracking the ball and bobbled it when it finally hit his glove, Phils catcher Mike Ryan ultimately held on to make the catch. But the high-flying Phillies marketing geniuses weren’t through yet with their Opening Day antics. The first pitch of the 1972 season was delivered by famous tightrope walker Karl Wallenda, of the famous Flying Wallendas, from atop a high-wire suspended over the field.

Josh:
What was this fascination with balls being dropped from on high?

Kevin:
Maybe it was because championships weren’t dropping from on high.

Josh:
You think they were actually trying to make a plea to the baseball gods?

Kevin:
Yeah, kind of like “seeding” a rain cloud.

In 1976, the Phillies came back to earth, as a horseman dressed as Paul Revere trotted out the season’s first Rawlings in the bicentennial year.

Many of these memorable promotions came to Phils phans courtesy of team vice president Bill Giles, and we salute his ingenuity. New ballparks, with all their bells and whistles and corporate-sponsored promotions, pale in comparison to just a little good old-fashioned human ingenuity.

The Vet had plenty of quirks built in over the years—such as a center-field water fountain and a home run spectacular on the facade of the fourth level featuring Philadelphia Phil and Phyllis in Colonial garb—but these were eventually cast aside to add more seats for football. During this period, the city allowed the Vet to slip into disrepair, until finally the Phillies took over its management in 1994. New blue seats were added (similar to those found at Citizens Bank Park), as well as a new out-of-town scoreboard. Finally in 2001, to the delight of trainers throughout the National League, the worst Astroturf in the big leagues was removed, and Nexturf, a synthetic grass, was installed.

Prior to recent history, the Vet years once represented the golden era of Phillies baseball, playing host to the MLB All-Star Games of 1976 and 1996, and the World Series of 1980, 1983, and 1993. Playing half his games on the Vet’s grueling rug slapped down on concrete, Mike Schmidt recorded 404 assists in 1974, the most ever by a National League third baseman. Schmidt won eight Gold Gloves in a row during one stretch, led the NL in homers eight times, and made twelve NL All-Star squads.

Fans visiting the Vet in 1981 saw history on several occasions. On April 29, Carlton struck out Tim Wallach for his three-thousandth career punch-out. Carlton was the first left-hander to cross the three-thousand-K threshold and would finish his career with 4,136, which currently ranks him fourth on the all-time list. On August 10, Pete Rose singled to break Stan Musial’s NL record with his 3,631st hit while the Phils took on St. Louis at home.