Former ballpark · 1971 – 2003
Veterans Stadium
Philadelphia, PA
- Opened
- 1971
- Closed
- 2003
- League
- NL
The lore
The Octorad
A stadium shaped to hold two sports at once, and the Philadelphia baseball that happened inside it from 1971 to 2003.
The 700 Level
The 700 level at Veterans Stadium became notorious for hostile and aggressive fan behavior — a reputation so intense that when the Phillies clinched the 1980 World Series, Philadelphia police circled the field with horses and dogs to keep fans from storming the turf. The building below those seats was an octorad, eight points of radius connected by straight lines, a shape intended to accommodate both baseball and football despite the mismatch in field dimensions. Philadelphia voters approved a $25 million bond in 1964 to build the place, then watched cost overruns force a second vote in 1967 that pushed the total near $60 million.
The park opened on April 10, 1971, when 55,352 fans watched Jim Bunning and the Phillies beat the Montreal Expos 4-1. The original playing surface was wall-to-wall AstroTurf with no traditional dirt infield — green from wall to wall, replaced by NexTurf in 2001, which was easier on players' knees. Center field measured 408 feet from home plate, the power alleys 371. The scoreboard complex cost $3 million, the most expensive ever installed at the time of opening.
October 21, 1980
The Phillies had never won a World Series when Game 6 against the Kansas City Royals drew 65,838 to Veterans Stadium. Tug McGraw ended it with a strikeout of Willie Wilson — a 4-1 final, and the first championship in franchise history. The park also hosted the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 1976 and again in 1996. Two nine-inning no-hitters were thrown there, both against the San Francisco Giants: Terry Mulholland pitched a 6-0 no-hitter in August 1990, and Kevin Millwood threw a 1-0 no-hitter in April 2003.
The final game played at the stadium was September 28, 2003, a 5-2 Phillies loss to the Atlanta Braves.
Reporting: Wikipedia, MLB.com. Park data: MLB StatsAPI and Retrosheet, via the Fever engine.
By the Desk · filed 2026-07-24 — the piece reads as of its filing; the park record around it is live · every fact in this piece comes from a filed, sourced research pack and clears an independent fact-check, and nothing is edited after filing.
Where it stood
Philadelphia, PA. We don’t have exact coordinates for this park in the historical record — we’d rather say so than pin the wrong spot.
Sources
- Retrosheet · as of 2026-07-23
The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.