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

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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 got loud enough to measure. The Philadelphia Inquirer set up a decibel meter at a 2023 postseason game against the Braves and recorded a reading of 112 decibels, which the Associated Press put on a level with standing next to a jackhammer. The meter hit 112 again when Nick Castellanos hit his second homer of the game. Trea Turner has called the noise at the Bank “AC/DC concert level.” Bryce Harper put it plainer: “There’s nothing like coming into the Bank and playing in front of these fans. Blue collar mentality, tough, fighting every single day. I get chills, man. I get so fired up. Man, I love this place.”

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, about seven feet of him.

A second set went up in the 2019 plaza rebuild, and it is a different thing entirely: the retired numbers themselves, sized for photographs. All eight retired numbers are out there, split three ways: four of them in the Left Field Plaza alongside the oversized World Series trophies, two more waiting at the Left Field Gate, and the last two over at the Third Base Plaza. The first-timer guide has the full map of which is where.

One bronze out there is not a Phillie at all. Connie Mack, who ran the Athletics from 1901 to 1950, stands on Citizens Bank Way in front of the park, moved there in 2004 from his old post outside Veterans Stadium.

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.

Two Liberty Bells, and only one of them is new. The 19-foot bell outside the Third Base Gate is the real thing from the Vet, the one that hung on the catwalk above center field from 1983 until the place came down. It weighs more than 5,000 pounds. The Phillies refurbished it and stood it up next to Pass and Stow in March 2019. The other one is inside, and it lights up and swings after every Phillies home run.

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, a multiyear renovation program remade the Hall of Fame Club and added a new two-level team store, both finished ahead of 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.

On July 14, 2026, Citizens Bank Park hosted its first All-Star Game. It was the Phillies’ fourth time hosting the Midsummer Classic and the first since the move from the Vet: the franchise previously hosted in 1952 at Shibe Park and in 1976 and 1996 at Veterans Stadium. MLB tied the date to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The American League won it 4-0, and the Yankees’ Cody Bellinger took MVP.

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, a broadcaster, and a manager: the Hall of Famers at three of the gates and in the Alley, the retired numbers around the plazas, and Connie Mack out on Citizens Bank Way. The Phanatic does his work inside.

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