Voices

Missing the veteran

By the

April 29, 2004


Massive blocks of concrete are toppled into a giant heap, thick wires stick out at strange angles and bright blue Port-a-Potties outline the ruins. The site is entirely unrecognizable. The debris of Veteran’s Stadium, piled several hundred feet high on the asphalt, amounts to an estimated 70,000 cubic yards of material. The ground that for 32 years hosted Philadelphia Phillies’ baseball and Eagles’ football is in the process of becoming a 5,500-space parking lot for the new stadium that sits just across the newly paved road.

Driving in the city for the first Saturday home game of the Phillies’ 2004 season, my family was disoriented without the familiar site of the gray-white Vet to guide us. My parents have been going to games there since they lived in the city in the late ‘70s, and I cheered for the Phillies even from within the womb. Trying to orient himself that Saturday, my dad grumbled about new traffic patterns and not knowing where to park. My mom just sighed, smiled at the sunny weather, and reclined the passenger seat back, as she is wont to do, until she bumped my knees.

I was busy watching people on the sidewalk go by in team paraphernalia, in the direction of the new stadium that we had yet to spot. Having gone to the Vet for 20 years, I had my doubts about how this new joint would match up. Granted, the Vet was made of old, unfriendly concrete and wasn’t particularly pretty, but the place had spirit. It was the only sports venue to which I felt any attachment.

My parents had season tickets in 1980, the year that my brother was born and the Phillies defeated the Kansas City Royals to win their only World Series championship. When it shrunk too much for him, my dad passed along his “Phillies, World Champions” T-shirt to me.

That Saturday, we finally got help from a policeman directing traffic, and the excited commentary began when we sighted Citizen’s Bank Park moments later. My first impression was that it was very angular, in comparison with the Vet’s rounded rectangular, or “octorad” shape. My mom praised the reddish-orange paint job and the patterned brickwork. My dad just pointed out that there were a lot of cars and that he still didn’t trust where he was being directed.

To his delight, we finally parked and got to the entrance, over which hangs a gargantuan picture of the Phillie Phanatic, in all his fuzzy, green mascot glory. The woman inside the gate was handing out hats with a red “P” for kids 14 and under, and my mom said, “Oh, what about an 18 year-old?” I’m actually 20. My mother hates lying, but haggling for free stuff, even under false pretenses, is an exception. Even when I was 15, my parents barely convinced the woman in the Vet that I was 14 and to give me a free Phillies backpack.

This time without a free “P” hat, we found our way through center field, which now consists mainly of a wide, cement walkway instead of the many levels of seats that the Vet had. The path was teeming with exuberant people in red attire. My parents were both in red T-shirts, and my mom was wearing red Chuck Taylors and a newly-purchased baseball pin with blinking lights. As we made our way to our seats, we kept critiquing the stadium and pointing out small differences between it and our beloved Vet, not yet ready to give up our loyalty.

Here there was more space to walk, without being as tall and looming as the Vet. The cement floors were unclean already. Once we got to our seats, about 40 rows back and to the left from home plate, we settled in; my mom with her bags of homemade sandwiches and fruit slices, me with a glove, and my father with a pair of slightly unnecessary binoculars. After jointly noting the presence of cupholders on the backs of the seats in front of us, we saw that the best new feature of the stadium is its view of the Philadelphia skyline.

We had missed the first half hour, but we saw the majority of the game and cheered Millwood and Abreu to a 6-3 victory as boisterously as every other fan. With each Phillies homerun, we jumped up and strained our voices in cheers, as the wire-frame “Liberty Bell” in center field “tolled” and its stars lit up in red and blue.

The teenage girl in front of me diligently writing stats in her scorebook, the woman to the right of my dad wearing tiny jeans shorts, Bahamas tank top and far too much hairspray, the middle-aged man with her who had slicked his jet black hair and the beer-bellied, belligerent balding man booing the umpire. I was surrounded by quintessential Philadelphia sports fans.

I also knew things hadn’t changed much when the cameraman for the Jumbotron began by focusing on babies but ended up fixating on young females in little tops. He particularly liked a row of four pretty girls leaning prominently on a fence, going back to shots of them at least four times.

Looking at the people on the giant screen and right around me-slightly sunburnt, mildly drunk, and very rowdy in mid-afternoon-I realized that although I’ll always love the Vet, it was the crowd, not the place, that had made the games so much fun.

Kim Rinehimer is a sophomore in the College and an associate editor of The Georgetown Voice. She refuses to lean over fences for the cameraman.



Read More


Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments