Phillies final game at Connie Mack Stadium turned into a horror story
By Tony Zonca — MikeDragoSports.com senior contributor
In 1968 a movie carrying the title “The Night of the Living Dead” became an instant classic among the horror genre. The film, a zombie apocalypse, was shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget by the famous shock-meister George Romero.
In the film the zombies traveled the earth in relentless search of human flesh. They were portrayed as being unthinking, tireless and seemingly impervious to injury.
On Oct. 1, 1970, another horror scene developed, this one at 21st and Lehigh in North Philadelphia Its location was Connie Mack Stadium. The occasion was the closing of the aging ballpark.
A year into my 34-year career with the Reading Eagle, I accompanied our baseball writer, Duke DeLuca, who was dispatched to cover, not so much the ballgame, but the pregame and postgame events Phillies management had scheduled. This, after all, was history in the making. Little did we know.
For the record the Phillies edged the Montral Expos 2-1 in 10 innings, a game to determine which of the two would stay out of the cellar.
Not even Romero could have anticipated what happened after the last pitch had been thrown.
As if on cue, men and women, girls and boys, descended on the field and through the seating area, some carrying toolboxes, and plundered. Like alcoholics attacking an overturned liquor truck, they ravaged the playing field, scooping up sod, digging out home plate and walking off with the bases.
They ripped out entire rows of seats, dismantled railings, attacked the press box and walked off with anything that wasn’t nailed down . . . and some that was. One guy walked through the crowd in the concessions area wearing a s___-eating grin and a toilet seat over his head.
At first the emerging scene was a curiosity. Before long it turned scary. And dangerous. In the movies the zombies could be killed by destroying their brains. That wasn’t an option at the yard that day; this mob was brainless.
It actually was a fitting, if not predictable, demise for the former Shibe Park. Life around the ballpark had turned dangerous. Gangs ruled the streets. Drug dealing was everywhere. There were robberies, muggings and worse occurring on a nightly basis. Fans simply became too scared to attend games there.
You would park your car in a lot and neighborhood kids would rush up: “Watch your car for a dollar, mister?” they would shout. You reluctantly obliged, otherwise you might return to find your vehicle propped up on cinder blocks.
After the so-called ‘White Exodus’ from those mean streets, those who moved into the rundown houses couldn’t name nine Phillies if you spotted them Granny Hamner, Whitey Ashburn, Robin Roberts, Puddin’ Head Jones, Johnny Callison and Richie Allen.
Never mind Jackie Robinson and the breaking of the color line in baseball, big league baseball had become the white man’s thing.
A few years after that last game, the ballpark sat, a blight on the city, weeds inside taller than Wilt Chamberlain. One night a gang of kids broke into the stadium and started a bon fire in the right-field bleachers. The once sparkling ballyard was reduced to metal and concrete.
Talk about horrors.
The next season our workplace became Veterans Stadium, one of several cookie-cutter ballparks, symmetrical in shape and featuring Astroturf fields and Star Wars-like scoreboards.
Unlike many of my colleagues I was content to work there. Reaching it was easy and parking was convenient. Once inside, access to the press box, the clubhouse and the playing field was handy.
The Vet did have its quirks. For one thing, apparently an army of stray cats had over the years invaded the bowels of the stadium. The smell apparently was bad enough to gag certain employees.
On hot summer days the temperature in the press box — it reached as high as 140 degrees at home plate — sometimes reached triple digits. During a rain delay many a rookie scribe’s computer was destroyed by cascading water from the seats above. Covering the Eagles as fall turned into winter, the heating units proved inadequate; it is not easy typing with popsicles for fingers.
The players really suffered. They were running and diving and sliding on a concrete floor covered by thin carpeting. A couple of weeks ago, during Alumni Weekend at Citizens Bank Park, the championship 1980 team was introduced in a pregame ceremony. Watching those vets limping to the field on failing knees and hips, you just knew their condition was the product of so many games played on a surface more suited for hard-court tennis.
The Bank is a nice ballyard, a younger stepsister to Camden Yards in Baltimore, the one-time crown jewel of major league yards. Baseball is nothing if not a copy-cat sport and the owners finally came to their senses.
The problem around baseball now is declining attendance. Just recently MLB announced some it’s-about-time changes to improve and speed up the game in 2023.
Once the pride and joy of the city, Connie Mack Stadium was reduced to a pile of rusting metal and broken concrete . . . and a date with the wrecking ball.
Talk about classic films.
