All of the seats in Connie Mack Stadium were made of wooden slats and bulged from decades of over-painting. The ones in our section were colored Pepto-Bismol pink under the soot coating. For the dollar and a quarter cost of occupying one of these seats, the Phillies management wasn’t about to equip the ushers with rags to wipe them down. That service went to those who paid three or four bucks for the gray or red seats. At fifteen, as I was then, a little soot on my pants was a badge of honor, anyway.
Steve had scoped this section out after, maybe the second or third game. Our original seats were on the second level way back behind home plate, tucked under the third level deck. We were behind so many girders that it was like trying to watch the action through a forest. The deck was so close overhead, that any play other than an infield grounder was out of our view. Twice we got busted by the ushers for trying to move closer, then Steve pointed to right field, like Babe Ruth calling his home run shot, and yelled something like we could probably see better from “out there.”
A better view of the Phillies then was often painful. They were perennial sub-basement tenants; intentionally so, it seemed, because any player who showed promise ended up on other teams before they blossomed. Fergie Jenkins, Jack Sanford, and a host of others began their careers in Philly but starred elsewhere while the home-team labored on with Dick “Dr. Strangeglove” Stuart, Bob Bowman, and a pitcher named Buzhardt. But we rooted anyway. And from our vantage point, we could vent our opinions of other losers like the Cubs and Pirates; usually to the effect that they stunk and we could do better out there. We could also watch Ritchie Ashburn rob sure doubles from the likes of Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Duke Snider, and Eddie Mathews.
When one of these heroes came to the plate, we’d smack our fists into our gloves and get ready. Imagine catching a ball slammed by one of these greats. We sure did. Unfortunately, too often we’d follow their shots soaring over fair territory and hear them clap off the corrugated steel right field wall or continue over the huge Longine’s clock atop the scoreboard. We still talked big, though. “Yeah, just wait until that foul comes our way.” I had the longest reach so I was going to grab the ball, sure. Louie was a little loco so I worried he might try to shove me over to grab the ball himself, so my strategy was to withstand a Louie push was to stand in a brace position – feet far apart, knees a little bent with the back of my legs snug against the seat.
One night, in the season that saw the Phillies set a record by losing 23 games in a row, they were playing the Cubs. We went to the game to see Ernie Banks but he wasn’t the one who sent the fly ball our way. We followed its arc. Christ, it was high. Everyone around us leapt to their feet. Arms and hands were waving around me. Yes, finally, a foul coming OUR way. The ball came careening toward us like a satellite falling out of orbit. I chickened out and ducked, cowering under my glove and Louie fell out of harm’s way just before I heard the ball smash into the seats a couple rows behind us. I looked back. The ball was back in the air, maybe 20 feet high, with poachers from other sections closing in on it.
It was a good lesson. Maybe the guys batting .214 for a major league team didn’t stink after all. They stood their ground when those rocket balls came at them. Maybe we were talking too big for our sooty britches.
A couple years later, just as I began college (coincidentally a 20-minute bus ride from Connie Mack Stadium) the Phils put together a winning team with Chris Short, Jim Bunning, Johnny Callison, Wes Covington. Instead of Steve and Louie, I went with new friends from the school newspaper, Arlene and Jim, mainly, and got better seats. The Phils, being themselves, reverted to type and lost the final 10 games of the 1964 season to come in second but still . . . second place. Wow.
By the time I returned from Vietnam, Connie Mack Stadium, built-in 1909 as Shibe Park, a stone and steel wonder of the machine age, had become a parking lot. Later a religious organization built a church on the spot where home plate used to be. How fitting, for there had stood Babe Ruth, Hank Greenberg, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, and, yes, Richie Ashburn.
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