Ultimate Baseball Road Trip (23 page)

It’s remarkable that the Phillies survived as a franchise for nearly one hundred seasons before finally winning their first world championship in 1980. They truly put their fans through the horrors before at last delivering.

Kevin:
Let that be a testament to teams that threaten to move after a losing decade or two.

Josh:
You mean like the Mariners. What are they, halfway there?

Kevin:
Ever since the Red Sox won the World Series, you’ve been a pain.

In 1883, the Worcester Ruby Legs were disbanded and the franchise moved to Philadelphia. The Cincinnati Reds may be an older franchise, but because the Reds were booted from the National League three years prior, the Phillies can claim the
honor of being the oldest franchise in all of professional sports to have remained in the same city under the same name.

On May 1, 1883, Recreation Park, located at the corner of 24th Street and Ridge Avenue and with a seating capacity of sixty-five hundred, hosted the very first Phillies game, which they lost 4-3 to the Providence Grays. The field, which was occupied by Union Army cavalry during the Civil War, had been used for hardball in the 1860s. In the 1870s, it became part of a horse market, before Phillies owner Al Reach purchased the land and built grandstands. One notable player from this era, pitcher Dan Casey, claimed until his death in 1943 that he was the inspiration for the most famous baseball poem of all time, “Casey at the Bat.”

Kevin:
A dubious claim to fame.

Josh:
Fame has always been fame.

Kevin:
What the heck does that mean?

Josh:
When you’re famous someday you’ll understand.

The Phils moved to Huntingdon Street Baseball Grounds in 1885. This ballpark was later known as National League Park and Philadelphia Park. It was also nicknamed the “Hump” because the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad tunnel ran beneath the outfield and the ground had been built up in a hump to cover it. In 1894 a fire destroyed the ballpark, and the Phils finished their home schedule at the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia Park was rebuilt on the spot to hold eighteen thousand and featured a cantilevered pavilion, a radical new architectural design.

When the Philadelphia A’s came to town as a part of the upstart American League, they snatched away three of the senior circuit team’s best hitters, Nap Lajoie, Ed Delahanty, and Elmer Flick. A cruel joke on the Phillies came later as these men won the first five AL batting titles (though none stuck it out in Philly all that long) and all were eventually elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Bad times were clearly headed the Phillies’ way when in 1903 Philadelphia Park collapsed, killing 12 people and injuring 232. But on the plus side, the Phils and the A’s played their first “City Series” exhibition games in 1903. This interleague play precursor was a tradition that continued for fifty years and was a fitting event in the City of Brotherly Love.

In 1913, when William F. Baker bought the team, Philadelphia Park was renamed Baker Bowl. At a mere 272 feet down the line to the right-field foul pole, Baker Bowl earned the diminutive moniker of the “Cigar Box.” A forty-foot wall in right made up of a scoreboard and later, advertisements, held a few balls in, but not many.

The Phils made it to their first World Series in 1915. After taking the first game from the Red Sox, they lost the next four. After this crushing defeat, dark days lay ahead for the Phils as they rarely rose from the cellar of the standings over the next three decades. Even with players like Chuck Klein and “Lefty” O’Doul on the team—Klein winning the Triple Crown for the Phils in 1933, banging out 28 home runs, 129 RBIs, and a .368 batting average, and O’Doul batting .398 and recording 254 hits in 1929—the Phillies couldn’t seem to win. Three decades of disappointment took its toll on the franchise, and Baker Bowl fell into a state of disrepair that matched the flagging Phillies organization.

In 1938, the end of the Baker Bowl era had come, as the Phils left the dilapidated ballpark and took up co-residence at Shibe Park with the crosstown Athletics of the American League. Built in 1909, Shibe was designed by A’s owner Ben Shibe and manager Connie Mack. It was the first concrete and steel stadium and originally seated 23,300. In 1925 a double-decked grandstand was built above the entire left-field fence, all the way out to dead center, giving the park its distinctive interior look. Before 1935, folks that lived along 20th Street could view games from their rooftops over the right-field fence without paying. Many built bleachers on their rooftops and charged admission. After Mack lost a lawsuit that attempted to prevent this, thirty-four-foot-high “spite fences” were constructed to block the encroaching view.

Josh:
Sounds like what went on at Wrigley Field for a while.

Kevin:
At least the Cubs finally made a deal with their neighbors.

But the real beauty of Shibe Park was its exterior. The brick facades that lined North 21st Street and West Somerset were made up of dozens of arches in two tiers. These two French Renaissance edifices came together and were capped by a glorious Beaux Arts tower with cupola and dome that formed the main entranceway. From the exterior, Shibe looked like a ballpark that belonged in Florence, Italy, next door to Il Duomo, rather than in America.

But Shibe didn’t provide the mojo needed to produce the elusive championship that Phillies fans longed for. The closest they got was in 1950, when the “Whiz Kids,” a group of plucky young Phils, including Robin Roberts, Del Ennis, and Willie Jones, finally made it to the World Series. But the Whiz Kids couldn’t produce either, as they were beaten by the Yankees in four straight. In fairness, three of those contests were one-run games.

Josh:
Perhaps “Cheez Whiz Kids” would have been more appropriate.

Kevin:
Save it for Geno’s, will ya?

In 1952 the Phillies hosted the All-Star Game at Shibe, then the next year the park was renamed Connie Mack Stadium, then in 1955 the A’s left for Kansas City, making the Phillies sole owners of a stadium named after the manager of what was once a rival crosstown team. Doesn’t quite seem right, does it? It would be a little like the Yankees moving into Shea Stadium and keeping the name. Oh well. Speaking of the Yankees, the old Yankee Stadium scoreboard, all sixty feet of it, was installed in right-center field at Connie Mack Stadium in 1956. And outside Citizens Bank Park, the home of the Phillies, stands a statue of Connie Mack himself, dressed as he always was, in a suit that made him look like an undertaker, without a smile on his face, facing the new ballpark of a team he had no affiliation with whatsoever.

The 1964 season may have been the most crushing of all for Phillies fans. With only twelve games to play, the Phils held a six-and-a-half-game lead in the NL over St. Louis. The team then lost ten straight games before winning its final two to finish in a tie for second-place with the Cincinnati Reds. The City of Brotherly Love was inconsolable, yet again.

But the 1970s brought a new stadium, the bicentennial All-Star Game, Hall of Famers Schmidt and Carlton, and a cast of great ballplayers and even greater characters that included Greg Luzinski, Bob Boone, and McGraw. But despite all this talent, the Phils’ hard luck continued. The team lost three straight NLCS between 1976 to 1978—one to former Phillies second baseman Sparky Anderson’s Cincinnati Reds, and two to the LA Dodgers.

The signing of Pete Rose in 1978 seemed to bring the missing piece the Phillies had long been searching for, and they won their first World Series over the Kansas City Royals in 1980, after nearly a century of middling teams. Schmidt was the MVP of both the season and the Series and Carlton won the Cy Young Award and two games in the October Classic. But the heads-up play of Rose in the decisive sixth game proved critical, as Charlie Hustle snagged a pop-up with the bases loaded in the ninth after it had been bobbled by the Phillies catcher, Boone. McGraw struck out Willie Wilson for the final out in front of a crazed crowd of more than sixty-five thousand at the Vet. And the first World Series had come to Philly at long last. Cheesesteaks for everyone!

Josh:
You know, I never think of Rose as a Philly. Only a Red.

Kevin:
I only think of him as a bookie.

Josh:
Nay, he was the guy
calling
the bookie.

The Phils returned to the Series in 1983, but after winning Game 1 in Baltimore, dropped four in a row—the last three at home. The freewheeling 1993 Phillies took Toronto to six games, led by Darren Daulton, Lenny Dykstra, and Mitch Williams, but lost the Series at SkyDome on the first-ever Series-clinching walk-off homer, struck by Joe Carter. Game 4 of the Series, played at the Vet, set new Series records for the longest nine-inning game (four hours, fourteen minutes), and the most runs scored (Toronto 15, Philadelphia 14).

But as we’ve said, times have changed in Philadelphia. A long history of finishing outside the winner’s circle has given way to Philly Pride that now, once again, includes the Phillies. Is Citizens Bank Park partially responsible for the reincarnation of the Phillies as winners? Who’s to say? But it certainly hasn’t hurt anything. The Phillies once again have a world-class facility to view their (newly) world-class product on the field. Considering how passionate Philadelphia sports fans are, it will be interesting to see if the red stripes can sustain both their on-field success, and the insanely high demand for tickets at CBP; both commodities were at their highest points in the team’s long history as this edition of
The Ultimate Baseball Road Trip
landed on bookstore shelves.

The ballpark looks and feels small on the inside, and certainly is smaller than it appears from the parking lots. The Phillies have put in place two major design elements to protect sight lines and make the view among the best in baseball. The first is the “bowl” design of the Field Level seats, which is a low grade rise that provides for many seats with great views. The second is the stacked second and third decks, which are suspended by cantilever to put them close to the
action. All of this means one thing to you: If you don’t have good seats, you might wind up with no seats. So plan ahead.

The Phillies went to great lengths to design a ballpark that provides superb sight lines for fans. For our money, all thirty-seven rows in every one of the first-level seating “neighborhoods”—clusters of sections pointed toward the plate at their own angle—provides great views. There’s no serious overhang issue on the Field Level, even at the highest rows. Flat-screen TVs hang down from the tops of these sections. The first base side is sheltered a bit from the sun, especially for an evening game, and certainly more so than the third base side or the outfield.

Most of the Field Level seats on the infield belong to season-ticket holders, but if you have the chance to pick up seats on the black market, consider the sections between home plate and first base (Sections 114–118) or home and third base (129–132). On either baseline, you might get lucky enough to score a first- or second-row seat. The sections directly behind the plate (120–128) do not offer the same opportunity, because they are behind the exclusive Diamond Club, which eats up the first several rows. And no, you’re not likely to find a scalper with Diamond Club seats.

Sections 101 to 105 in right field and Sections 142 to 148 in left offer excellent chances to score batting practice homers or regulation long balls. Just be sure to steer clear of Section 106 in right field and Section 140 in left as they are screened by the foul poles.

These are the second-level seats on the infield. You know, the “club” sections. As usual, we appreciate the sight lines, but not the stodgy atmosphere.

We don’t recommend these second-level seats in foul territory in deep left field. The view is better from the Scoreboard Porch, and costs less money, to boot.

Located on the Club Level, these right-field seats offer a very respectable perch from which to watch the game. The seats don’t hang out over the first level like at old Tiger Stadium or Citi Field, but they’re a heck of a lot closer to the field than the outfield seats were at the Vet. We don’t recommend Sections 201 to 204 in fair territory, because the loss of the corner can be significant. Sections 208 to 211 increasingly begin to lose the left-field corner down the line, while 205, 206, and 207 have foul-pole obstruction issues, especially Section 205 where seats 16 and 17 in all rows should be avoided. The first base path is blocked, as is the action at the plate. These twenty seats really should be taken out, as the Phils have worked tirelessly to protect views everywhere else in the park but here.

Kevin:
Love your neighbor and lean to the left.

Josh:
Hey, it’s just as easy to lean right, pal.

Kevin:
Don’t worry, I’m not going after your cheesesteak.