My Memories of Phillies Baseball at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium
“Meet me at the statue of the guy sliding into second.” That’s what my friends and I often said to each other when we planned to take the subway down to Broad and Patterson to see a Phillies game. The statue was right next to a ticket office, where we might sometimes splurge and ask for the best available seats. Usually, however, we spent our time in the cheap seats in the upper deck. Veterans Stadium opened in 1971; a multipurpose stadium that seated over 70,000 for baseball and football games. Considered state of the art at the time, it boasted two electronic scoreboards that could make cartoonish faces to represent the players on the field, and incite the crowd to cheer after critical plays. AstroTurf served as the playing surface, following the trend of time. The Vet also almost became a dome, as Philadelphia craved the honor of hosting a Super Bowl one day. But Veterans Stadium was to be more than just merely the new steel and concrete...