Citizens Bank Park is a baseball stadium located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the city's South Philadelphia Sports Complex. It is the ballpark of Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies. The stadium opened April 3, 2004, and hosted its first regular season baseball game on April 12 of the same year, with the Phillies losing to the Cincinnati Reds, 4–1. It is named after Citizens Financial Group.
The ballpark was built to replace the 33-year-old, now-demolished Veterans Stadium, a multipurpose football and baseball facility that was demolished in 2004. Citizens Bank Park features a natural grass-and-dirt playing field and a number of Philadelphia-style food stands that serve cheesesteak sandwiches, hoagies, Tastykakes, soft pretzels, Yards and Yuengling beer, and many other regional specialties. The ballpark lies on the northeast corner of the Sports Complex, which includes Lincoln Financial Field, the Wells Fargo Center, and Xfinity Live!, the Center's adjacent theme park and food court. The stadium seats 42,901.
History
Planning
In 1999, the Phillies and the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL joined their western Pennsylvania counterparts, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Steelers, in making requests to replace both Veterans Stadium and Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh with separate baseball and football stadiums. Pressure for new Philadelphia stadiums increased after a railing collapsed at "The Vet", as Veterans Stadium was commonly known, during the 1998 Army–Navy Game, injuring eight cadets. The Pirates threatened to leave Pittsburgh in 1997, helping to convince the state legislature to approve funding for the four proposed stadiums. With their architectural plans already in place, Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh approved the pacts swiftly, but debate in Philadelphia's city leadership continued even as Pittsburgh opened its stadiums (PNC Park for the Pirates and Heinz Field for the Steelers) in 2001. The Eagles ultimately agreed to the site of a former food warehouse slightly southeast of Veterans Stadium. Lincoln Financial Field celebrated its grand opening in August 2003.
The Phillies originally sought to build a downtown ballpark similar to Baltimore's, Denver's, Cincinnati's, Cleveland's, Detroit's and San Francisco's. Various locations were proposed, including Broad and Spring Garden streets; Spring Garden and Delaware Avenue; and next to 30th Street Station on the site of the former main post office. The team and the city announced that the site would be at 13th and Vine streets in Chinatown, just north of Interstate 676, within walking distance of Center City. There was considerable support for a downtown ball park from business and labor and the city at large. But Chinatown residents protested, fearing a new ballpark would destroy their neighborhood. The City and team eventually settled on building at the South Philadelphia Sports Complex on the site of another abandoned food warehouse. In the years that followed, residents, fans, and owner Bill Giles expressed regret that the new ball park was not located in Center City Philadelphia. Regardless of location, however, the team set attendance records in 2010 (3,647,249 fans, averaging 45,028) with all home games sold out for the first time in the team's long history (81), extending a sellout streak dating back to July of 2009 to 123.
Chief architect of the new stadium was EwingCole's Stanley Cole. Unveiling of the new park's design and ground breaking ceremonies took place on June 28, 2001. Following the game that evening, the location of the left-field foul pole, from home plate, was unveiled at the outset of the team's annual Fourth of July fireworks display. On June 17, 2003, Citizens Bank agreed to a 25-year, US $95 million deal for the park's naming rights and advertising on billboards, telecasts, radio broadcasts, and publications. The ballpark was officially topped off on August 12, 2003, and opened in April 2004.
Modifications
Shortly after the park opened in 2004, the bullpens were reassigned so the Phillies' pitchers used the lower pen and visitors used the upper pen. This was done to give Phillies' pitchers a better view of the game and to protect them from heckling by fans. However, the team forgot to rewire the bullpen phones after the bullpens were reassigned, so during the first game, the dugout coaches had to communicate with the bullpens by hand signals.
In its first years, Citizens Bank Park allowed 218 home runs in 2004 and 201 in 2005. More than half of those home runs were to left-field. Following the 2005 season, the left-field wall was moved back .