The Coliseum of Concrete: My Deranged Love Affair With Veterans Stadium

From the outside, Veterans Stadium just looked mean. On the inside, it proved to be even more demented. But I miss Veterans Stadium. I miss it dearly.

Most sports stadiums now are sterile pits of corporate greed (sorry, I meant “incentive”). They’re pristine, aesthetically pleasing to the eyes, and all the more vapid and lifeless.

Veterans Stadium was not.

Veterans Stadium was not just a building, rather it was a true personification of the city of Philadelphia during its tenure from the years 1971–2003.

But what it did best was that it captured the insanity of its fans and it intimidated the hell out of everyone else.

And on 3501 Broad Street in South Philadelphia, which is now a parking lot, the ghost of Veterans Stadium still lingers and its memory is still wedged into many Philly fans’ hearts.

Here are 10 ways that Veterans Stadium scared the hell out of people

ITS LOOK ALONE

The look of Veterans Stadium alone was pretty intimating.

At the time, it was marketed as a state-of-the-art sports coliseum that would revolutionize the way stadiums would be built (or so the architects claimed back in 1971). However, by its closing in 2003, it stood as a memory: a gigantic rat infested stripped-down concrete eyesore of a memory, but a memory nonetheless.

In between those years, however, aesthetically speaking, it stood rather ornery.

Gray and slanted. Old and disheveled. Battered and grungy. From the outside, Veterans Stadium just looked mean.

But on the inside, especially on game day, when opposing players entered the building and looked up to the black rafters and saw the American flag whipping in the fierce South Philadelphia wind, and when they felt the hard concrete of every square inch, and smelled the vicious stench of burnt popcorn, and heard the bellowing chants of Philly fans shouting obscenities from 7 stories above, they knew they weren’t in Kansas anymore; they knew they had entered into a demented cathedral.

ITS FANS

Veterans Stadium, however, would not be anything without its fans.

Whenever you looked at the crowds at Veterans Stadium, you’d notice immediately quite a range of age. In true, tribal fashion, Philly fans are generational. From ages 2 to 92, Philly fans, unlike many fans, truly embrace their local sports team as if they were family. And for 34 years, Veterans Stadium was their home.

Philadelphia sports fans have been labeled with a slew of derogatory terms by the general media since the Taft administration. They’ve been called vile and rude. Hostile and incensed. Maniacs and certifiable. Some would even go so far as to compare Philly fans as being: “barbarians at the gates of Rome.”

Those terms are not hyperbolic. They’re pretty accurate portrayals and some might add richly deserved. But what those lazy metaphors and descriptions fail to capture is Philly fan’s vitriolic passion they have for their sports and their teams. Philly fans raised the standards of lunacy. But that’s only because, unlike many fair-weathered fans, Philly fans truly care. And sometimes, way too much.

However, passion often brings the worse out of people, and as we all know alcohol and idiocy never mixes quite well with anger and arrogance. And with the added psychological disturbance of decades upon decades of losing seasons, there were many instances where rowdy, incensed Philly fans showed indecent, violent, and criminal behavior that was ripe for national ridicule.

Over the 34 year existence of Veterans stadium, thousands of fights broke out in the stands and hundreds of thousands of projectiles were thrown onto the field. It got so bad that the city instituted not just a holding cell, but an actual live judge, Seamus P. McCaffery, to hold court during Eagles games.

That’s the ugly side of passion, and the Vet was home to most of it.

So if you think your city’s sports team are fanatical, before you make any declaration of any kind, you really have to ask yourself a series of serious, introspective questions.

How many generations of fans do you see during games?

How many fans do you see on a game by game basis, especially during losing seasons?

But most importantly: has your stadium ever contained a holding cell with a live judge and court?

Probably not.

ITS ASTRO TURF

You don’t get rug burn from grass. But you did from Veterans Stadium.

For the players, the playing surface of Veterans Stadium itself proved to be their first challenge.

Developed in the early 1970s by the company Monasto (no, seriously), “AstroTurf” replaced regular grass and was “the trend” of stadiums everywhere. However, for many reasons, that trend was severely short-lived.

Many players described their experiences of the AstroTurf in Veterans Stadium being the equivalent of playing on the surface of Mars. It was hard and unforgiving, and seemingly not of this world. On hot sunny days, outfielders and infielders were mercilessly blinded by an ungodly glare that bounced off from it. From the infield, balls bounced in odd and unpredictable ways. And with each kickoff and punt, you’d never know which way the ball would bounce.

But the real reason Veterans Stadium’s AstroTurf became infamous was that it was just simply flat out dangerous to play on. Opposing teams dreaded traveling to Philly because aside from their ravaged incensed fans, the actual surface they were forced to play on might as well had been carpeted concrete.

Countless injuries occurred in Veterans Stadium, many of them career-ending, and physicians and medical staffs of Veterans stadium were constantly busy attending to thousands of shattered knees, shoulders, feet, arms, and legs that simply would not work anymore.

As life long Eagles fan, Dave Fava, put it: “The turf was as hard as the actual seats in the Vet. After a while, you’d just feel so bad for the players.”

Didn’t Philly fans throw snowballs at Santa Claus during an Eagles game?

Yes. Yes, they did. But that was years before they played in Veterans Stadium. And according to former mayor Ed Rendell “He was a skinny Santa!”

But they did so out of sheer frustration. They did so because Philly fans had to endure generations of losing.

It took 77 years for the Phillies to capture their first World Series and another 28 years to capture their second.

It took 52 years for the Eagles to win their first Super Bowl.

But in that time, a ton of losing had occurred. And Veterans Stadium captured a large percentage of that history.

The Vet was home to some 110 Eagles losses and 2,646 Phillies losses. The Lacross team the “Philadelphia Wings” probably had a ton of losses too, but you can look up those stats on your own.

But however you look at it, that’s a lot of losses.

When teams lose as much as the Phillies and Eagles did and did not live to their expectations, year after year the fans in Veterans Stadium would let them have it. It was only natural. It was only right. For in the words of the great John Facenda: “A true Philadelphia fan learns to boo before they learn to speak.”

MORE YEARS OF LOSING

Losing has compounded interest. Decades and decades of sheer and utter disappointment can lead to discontent and disillusion. And after the 1980 season, when the Phillies won the World Series and the Eagles had made it to Super Bowl 15, 23 ungodly years of losing seasons had followed.

Both the Eagles and Phillies were remarkably excellent in coming up with new, fascinating, mind-bending ways to lose games and break hearts. And the Vet was home to half of them.

Indeed, the last games both the Eagles and Phillies had played in Veterans Stadium were losses. But for the Eagles, the 2003 NFC Championship game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was as bad of a loss as many fans had ever endured. Many childhoods were ruined that day. Mine included. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers demolished the Eagles 27–10 on that cold-ass January day. And that was that of Veterans Stadium.

Some 20 years have passed since that game was played, but it still needs to be said that the loyalty of Philly fans never wavered. These fans never abandoned their Phillies, and certainly never their Eagles. Year after year, these fans continue to cheer their teams on. And even after the Vet, hope always springs eternal in Philadelphia.

INTIMATING PLAYERS

Throughout the history of Veterans Stadium, the role of intimidation proved to be embodied and celebrated by the players themselves.

Reggie White, Seth Joyner, Brian Dawkins, Steve Carlton, Michael Jack Schmidt, the entire roster of the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies, and yes, for 43 games, one of the most revered and beloved players to ever put on a uniform in the city of Philadelphia (Chase Cameron Utley) had all step forth in Veterans Stadium and had all unloaded fear into the eyes of their opponent.

You didn’t want to mess with these dudes.

Some would say they played mean. Others would say they played dirty. But whatever is the case, the players mentioned were loved in Philadelphia because they had fully embodied and embraced the town they played for and transmuted their collective aggression into their play.

These players would smash backs and receivers down to the ground. They would slide into third like a thundering locomotive. And these players would raise their fist to the stands like a gladiator in the Roman coliseum, letting the opposing team know exactly where they were.

And for the opposing team during every kickoff and first pitch they knew certain undeniable facts. They knew for them that this was not a home game. They knew they were on the corner of Front Street and Pattison Ave in the heart of South Philadelphia. They knew they were in for a long, drag-out, knock-down slugfest. And the hostile crowd of the Vet would remind them of these facts with every boo.

ITS GROWING INFAMY

For the reasons stated earlier in this article, many players and teams simply did not want to play in Veterans Stadium.

Philly’s vicious reputation continued, but no other place amplified it quite like Veterans Stadium. And during the decades of the ’70s, 80’s, and 90’s, Veterans Stadium’s unmitigated infamy continued to grow.

Notwithstanding, some intrinsically understood its importance to the game and its history. The great coach Bill Parcels grew a great affinity towards the Vet but in a “distorted” and “perverted” way. On the sidelines he's reported to revel in the Vet’s insanity, calling it a “Banana Republic” and a “communist country.”

At its peak, the Vet was at its loudest when the Dallas Cowboys came to town. This rivalry spanned long before the Vet and continues to this day. And as any Philly fan knows, on the Sundays when the Dallas Cowboys entered the field, this was without a doubt when the Vet was at its loudest and most vicious.

Teams marked the days they had to play the Eagles or Phillies on the calendar with dread and impending anticipation. And for these teams, it was a psychological war far from get go. They knew ahead of time that it was going to be loud. They knew these games were going to be hostile. And year after year, horror story after horror story would be told. And at the end of each game, more would be manifested.

In sports, home-field advantage used to be a real thing. It still is somewhat, but it certainly lost its luster over the years. Veterans Stadium, however, truly personified home-field advantage. For when it mattered the most, games against the Phillies and Eagles no longer resembled sheer tests of physical athletics and skill. Rather, they were cacophonous gauntlets of psychological hell that, on both sides, would test every fiber of bravery and courage.

ITS DECAY

As much work the grounds people did to make Veterans Stadium beautiful, they could only do so much.

From its cracked floors and stairs to its stained concrete walls, to its unswept alleyway entrances, to its grimy sticky, seats, and for the children’s sake, I decline to mention what the restrooms looked and smelled like. Suffice to say, there’s only so much that any cleaning crew can do.

The “lived-in” feel of Veterans Stadium settled in quickly. The constant use and abuse of the stadium quickly revealed the Vet’s age and like a long time smoker, age quickly caught up to it. Needless to say, the Vet got very old, very fast.

And year after year, it just got worse.

As each year passed, fans could see the stadium itself decay before their eyes.

After ten years, the stadium resembled a used car. Reliable, but clearly worn.

After twenty years, fans had to admit to themselves that, indeed, their stadium was beginning to resemble an outdoor dungeon.

And after thirty years, Veterans Stadium had been rendered to a rotting, concrete corpse.

Some historians dream and imagine what the Colosseum in Rome looked like one hundred years after the Empire descended into darkness. But in reality, all they would really have to do was go to a Phillies or Eagles game in the late ’90s and early 2000s. And afterward, they would pretty much get the gist.

THE OTHER ANIMALS

There were many times the circus came to Philadelphia. But after the show was over, the animals went with the crew. However, that wasn’t always the case in Veterans Stadium.

In many cases, certain animals refused to leave. Towards the declining years of the Vet, it got pretty ugly. And during its very last years, the building itself achieved the unique and proper status of being condemnable. As a result, rodents, varmints, and even stray felines occupied and maintained residency.

Spotting cockroaches sprawling out from crevices was a daily expectation. Seeing possums and raccoons streak up and down the baseline was a weekly treat. There were hundreds of reports of rats scurrying above the ceiling of coaches’ offices. There were hundreds of more reports of stray cats (the size of bengals) stalking and patrolling the fifty-yard line. In fact, one rat, in particular, resided inside the Eagles locker room and was treated by the players as a good luck charm.

But before its timely implosion, one can certainly make the case that Veterans Stadium was at its very worst when it had literally transformed into an “Animal House”, which oddly people always thought it was in the first place.

ITS LINGERING MEMORY

The great film director David Lynch had been routinely asked by his fans and admirers what was the inspiration for his dark, surreal films.

And without pause, Mr. Lynch would say with a genuine smile: “The city of Philadelphia.”

Now, some may take that as a slight, but the answer is honest as it is factual.

Like any city, the city of Philadelphia does have its dark side. However, it just shows it more often and Veterans Stadium both personified and embodied its sublime darkness.

It was a spiteful stadium. It was an eyesore. And if Veterans Stadium was a person, you’d certainly inform the authorities. But in an odd and perverted way, it was charming.

Most people hated the Vet. But those who loved it did because of the sheer fact that most people hated it.

Many people got beaten up in Veterans Stadium. A few people got married in it. Granted many more people got beaten up than got married, but when people left Veterans Stadium they were left with impressionable, unforgettable experiences.

You can say many things about Veterans Stadium, but you cannot say that the Vet wasn’t memorable.

It was a monster. But like Roosevelt said of Stalin, it was “Our monster”. And to those who loved it, it remains surely missed.