PHILADELPHIA, PA — Thirty summers ago, the last time the Major League Baseball All Star game was hosted in Philadelphia, relief pitcher Ricky Bottalico was the lone representative for the home team.
It was soppy humid, hot. Steam off the Kelly green of the astroturf. Thunder and rain hit a few hours before first pitch. Smog bit by the stadium lights. But by 8:30 it had cleared, and the Brutalist block bowl of Veterans Stadium was filled to the 700 level with 62,670 fans, the highest attendance for a baseball game there since Game 5 of the 1993 World Series.
It was the bottom of the fifth when the National League manager, the legendary Bobby Cox, turned to his assistant, the Phillies old skipper Jim Fregosi, in the home dugout.
“Bring your boy in next inning, Jimmy,” he said in an early broadcast mic’d up moment. Fregosi and his red pinstripes caught an instant center stage as the camera centered him.
“Bow-tal-eeco,” Cox added. “Yessir.”
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Out in the pen and through the filthy plastic panel of the right field wall, Bottalico was throwing.
If the ’93 Phils were a red giant, they were a dying star by the time the city hosted the All Star game three years later. It was the early stage of a terminal decline that would result in a fourteen year postseason drought. The resurgent nebula would not glimmer again for another decade, with the advent of Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Jimmy Rollins.
For the last place ’96 Phils and a few million phanatics inside and out of the stadium, all they had, amidst this national showcase of their sport on their home turf, was Bottalico. The recognition of a single Phillie on the field was still thrilling. It was the only taste, a spare shade, of the transcendence of seeing the NLCS hosted at Veterans Stadium in ’93.