Blast from the Past -- The Vet

A few shots from Labor Day, 2003, a make-up game between the Phillies and Boston Red Sox.
This was my last of many visits since 1977 to Veterans Stadium, Philadelphia's round bowl of concrete and plastic.
Amazingly, over the last decade, nearly all of the similarly designed multi-purpose stadia have disappeared from the baseball landscape. Only Toronto's Rogers Centre remains as a legacy of that architectural generation.
Above: a 1984 visit to The Vet on a night Hall of Pitcher Steve Carlton was on the mound. Note the original pastel seating -- and scoreboard responding to a Von Hayes home run.
While Joni Mitchell may warn, "You don't what you got til it's gone," I'm not sure many Phillies fans would agree. Next Sunday, we'll be on hand for the Phillies interleague "road" series against the Blue Jays at its remarkably superior replacement, Citizens Bank Park.

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