Citizens Bank Park (Take 2)

Citizens Bank Park
1 Citizens Bank Way
Philadelphia, PA 19148

September 17, 2016
On our return to Philadelphia, we wised up. We didn't follow the Mets or Yankees. We wore the colors of the natives. We created a Philly-themed roadtrip playlist that included songs from the Rocky soundtrack, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and songs that featured the words, "Philadelphia" or "Philly." It also may have included a few choice Disney songs. And perhaps Phil Collins and Tina Turner ("we don't need another hero. We don't need another way home. All we want is life beyond Thunderdome").

Parking was $18. Before heading into the stadium, we stopped at the same gate we stopped at on our first trip to Philly and retook the photo of us.

 

Once inside, we decided to walk around the stadium as if it we'd never been there. On our first visit, we were still new to stadium touring and didn't really have a defined system for touring other teams' stadiums yet. Also, we spent a lot of time stalking the Phillie Phanatic and being physically and verbally abused by Phillies' fans. It's hard to focus on your environment when your life is constantly being threatened by a different a-hole each minute. Our first stop was the Phillie Phanatic Phun Zone where we retook a photo of Serena being sad that she's too tall to play in the fun zone. What a difference nearly 10 years makes. Now Serena looks like she's built like a man. Fantastic.

Nearby is a bronze statue of Harry Kalas, the Phillies' broadcaster from 1971-2000.

Lisa also re-bought the Phillie Phanatic plush toy because she'd had limited purchasing options during our original visit. This little nothing toy cost her $16.

The first thing we noticed is that people are a lot nicer to you in Philadelphia when you're not wearing Mets' shit. Also, the Phillies were terrible this season, so maybe the fans just felt depressed and defeated. When we first started touring stadiums, we got it in our heads that we were going to compare Italian sausage sandwiches around the country. Easily one of our worst ideas ever. It turns out that only New York and DC know how to make a quality sausage sandwich. Our cities must have a lot of native Italians. Now, we try to find what the stadium is "known" for or we try to get recommendations from local fans. In Philadelphia, you always, always go with a Philly cheesesteak sandwich. We finally had the chance to perform a "do over" on the food front. We hit up the Tony Luke's stand in Asburn Alley in center field for our sandwiches. Our sandwiches were $11/each and we both opted for fried onions and provolone cheese. Beers were $9/each. We ate at high top tables nearby overlooking the field.

 

 

Asburn Alley seems to be where it's at in terms of activity at Citizens Bank Park. After we polished off our sandwiches, we checked our the mini Phillies' Hall of Fame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 From here, we carried our beers up to our seats.

 

 

Our pitching matchup was Jeremy Hellickson for Philly and Jose Urena for Miami. The game is really not that important. The Phillies scored a shit ton of runs in the early innings. It bordered on embarrassing. Do you notice the activity taking place behind us in the photo featured above? What you can't see is that it is a small child violently vomiting all over the floor behind us. We did not hear the noise of her vomiting over the stadium din, but we did hear her crying. We just assumed that she was crying because that's what kids do when they're cranky. However, when Lisa turned around, she saw the damage. Puke. Puke everywhere. It smelled terrible. We almost puked ourselves. Lisa shouted, "I'm gonna do it too!" Maintenance came by to clean up, but it didn't matter. The stench of child vomit permeated the air.

Because the game was such an ass kicking, it dragged. We wish we had more to report about it, but unfortunately, it just wasn't that interesting. On our way out, we stopped at a little pretzel stand for cinnamon pretzels. It couldn't be helped.