BBBLEACHER BOUND

Citizens Bank Park History: From the Vet's Rubble to Bedlam at the Bank

Opening night, 2004

Citizens Bank Park opened on April 12, 2004, and the Phillies lost. Cincinnati won 4-1 in front of 41,626. Randy Wolf threw the first pitch, and Bobby Abreu hit the first home run in the building’s history, which counted for the record book and nothing else that night. The park had already run a dress rehearsal, an exhibition game on April 3.

Three weeks earlier, the old home came down. Veterans Stadium held the Phillies from 1971 through 2003, and on March 21, 2004, it was imploded in 62 seconds. The site is parking lots now. Fans tailgating before a game today are standing on it.

The park that almost went downtown

None of this was supposed to happen in South Philadelphia. Through the late 1990s the Phillies wanted a downtown ballpark and chased one site after another: Broad and Spring Garden, land near 30th Street Station, and finally a plan at 13th and Vine on the edge of Chinatown. The Chinatown plan got the furthest and died the hardest, killed by neighborhood opposition. In November 2000, Mayor John Street announced the new park would go to the South Philadelphia sports complex instead, next door to the Vet it would replace.

Ground broke on June 28, 2001. EwingCole, a Philadelphia firm, designed the park alongside HOK Sport. Citizens Bank bought the naming rights in June 2003 for $95 million over 25 years.

The two-night World Series clincher

Game 5 of the 2008 World Series started on October 27 in a cold rain and stopped in the middle of it. Tampa Bay tied the game 2-2 in the top of the sixth, the field was turning into a swamp, and the game was suspended. It is still the only World Series game ever suspended mid-game.

The resumption came two nights later, October 29, as a three-inning sprint. Geoff Jenkins led off the bottom of the sixth with a pinch-hit double and scored on a Jayson Werth single. Rocco Baldelli answered with a home run in the seventh to tie it again. Then Pat Burrell doubled in the bottom of the seventh, in what turned out to be his last at-bat as a Phillie, and pinch-runner Eric Bruntlett came around on Pedro Feliz’s single. 4-3. Brad Lidge, who had not blown a save all season, struck out Eric Hinske for the final out.

The Phillies were World Series champions for the second time in franchise history, and the building was four years old.

Back-to-back pennants and a no-hitter

The next October the Phillies clinched at home again, beating the Dodgers 10-4 in the NLCS for back-to-back pennants.

Then came Roy Halladay. On October 6, 2010, in Game 1 of the NLDS against the Reds, in his first postseason appearance, Halladay threw a no-hitter and won 4-0. It was the second postseason no-hitter in major league history, after Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Fifty-four years between them, and the second one happened here.

Bedlam at the Bank

October 23, 2022. NLCS Game 5, Padres up 3-2 in the bottom of the eighth, the first pennant since 2009 sitting right there. Bryce Harper took Robert Suarez deep for a two-run homer, 4-3 Phillies, and that score held. Red October got its signature moment, and the pennant was clinched at home. On the radio, Scott Franzke’s call gave the night its name, “Bedlam at the Bank,” and the team later trademarked the phrase.

The building has hosted the other kind of October too. In 2023 the Phillies came home with a lead in the NLCS and dropped Games 6 and 7 to Arizona on their own field. The pennant was decided at the Bank and left with the Diamondbacks.

The 2025 team won a second straight NL East title, then went out in the NLDS against the Dodgers, eliminated October 9.

Statues, bells, and the Wall of Fame

Zenos Frudakis sculpted the four Hall of Fame bronzes: Robin Roberts at the First Base Gate, Mike Schmidt at the Third Base Gate, Steve Carlton at the Left Field Gate, and Richie Ashburn in the outfield walkway that carries his name. Harry Kalas stands on the main concourse behind Section 141, and the Phillies have since added a series of smaller retired-number statues around the plazas, including Jim Bunning and Carlton at the Left Field Gate and Dick Allen and Roy Halladay by the Third Base Plaza.

The Toyota Phillies Wall of Fame has been in the left-field plaza since 2018. The retired numbers cover Ashburn, Bunning, Allen, Schmidt, Carlton, Halladay, and Roberts, with Grover Cleveland Alexander and Chuck Klein honored from the era before uniform numbers.

There are two Liberty Bells. The 19-foot replica that hung at the Vet now sits at the third-base approach outside the park. The other hangs over the batter’s eye in the outfield and rings when a Phillie homers.

The building keeps changing

The left-field wall moved back five feet after the 2005 season. PhanaVision got rebuilt in 2023, 77 percent larger than the old board at 152 by 86 feet. In 2025 the bullpens were enclosed behind accordion doors, which says something about the relationship between Phillies fans and visiting relievers.

In 2026 came a reported $600 million multiyear renovation program, with the Hall of Fame Club rebuild and a new two-level team store finished before the All-Star Game. One thing is not changing. John Middleton has said on the record that Citizens Bank Park will never get a roof.

And on July 14, 2026, the park hosts its first All-Star Game.

The Phanatic

The Phanatic debuted on April 25, 1978, a large green something from the Galapagos Islands built by Bonnie Erickson and Wayde Harrison. Erickson had designed Miss Piggy, and the family resemblance is real: the Phanatic comes straight out of the Muppets school of character building.

The business story is better than the costume. At creation, the Phillies could have bought the character’s copyright outright for $5,200, and Bill Giles passed. The team later paid $250,000 to buy it back, and Giles wrote in his book that passing on the $5,200 was one of the worst decisions of his life. The rights fight came back in 2019, when the creators moved to reclaim the copyright. The team rolled out a redesigned Phanatic during the dispute, and a 2021 settlement ended it with both designs usable.

On game nights he rides an ATV and fires a hot-dog cannon, a device with one documented 2018 misfire that sent a flying hot dog into a fan. And for all of it, there is no Phanatic statue outside. The bronzes out there are ballplayers and a broadcaster: the Hall of Famers at the gates and the retired-number statues around the plazas. The Phanatic does his work inside.