The Final Inning
September 27, 2022
This article was originally published in the December/January 1977 issue of DEMOLITION magazine, then called Demolition Age.
When Bill Geppert attended the last game ever played in Connie Mack Stadium at the close of the baseball season in 1970, he hardly imagined that six years later, Geppert Brothers Inc. would be lowest of six bidders to demolish the famous site. Nor could he have guessed the unusual circumstances that would surround the start of work on that job.
Built by Ben Shibe and Connie Mack in 1908 at a cost of $500,000, the stadium opened as Shibe Park on April 12, 1909. In its heyday, it help capacity crowds of 38,000 avid fans who cheered the Athletics and Phillies baseball teams and also the Philadelphia Eagles football players. But by 1970, the once colorful, reverberating facility was hopelessly antiquated compared to the new, larger Veteran’s Stadium, where the Phillies would move permanently. During those 61 years, 47 million fans witnessed sports events in the ball park, which has been renamed to honor Athletics owner-manager, Connie Mack.
“I vividly remember being in the stands that day,” Geppert reminisces. “Some special activities were planned after the game — a parachutist, a helicopter picking up home plate and more — but instead, people went wild. They swarmed onto the field, dug up pieces of sod, ripped seats up, tore bathroom doors off, getting souvenirs. Some people brought crowbars and sledge hammers to do it. They figured that was the end for the stadium and they were there for that last game and wanted to take something home to remember it. I borrowed a hammer from the guy behind me and took home four seats myself!”
A year later, fire ravaged the abandoned stadium when two young brothers playing beneath the stands found and ignited plastic bags of flammable liquid in the old press box. When their frantic efforts to put out the fire failed, they fled as the flames spread out of control. Now the roof sagged ominously and tall weeds and debris choked the playing field. Uneasy neighborhood residents, viewing the structure as a public nuisance attracting drunks and rats, requested owner Jerry Wolman (one-time controller of the Eagles) to demolish the derelict building. In October 1975, a Common Pleas judge ordered it torn down, and when Wolman failed to cooperate, the city of Philadelphia elected to demolish it, billing him, and received bids May 11, 1976.
“I think all the contractors bid very competitively to get it even if it meant sacrificing normal profit to do so,” Geppert speculates thoughtfully. “Maybe because of the prestige or nostalgia or honor of tearing down the old Connie Mack Stadium. We tried real hard and were successful with $112,076. The $76 was for the Bicentennial Year,” he adds with a chuckle.
But weeks dragged by without contracts from the city despite Geppert Brothers’ repeated inquiries. Then, on June 21, as Geppert drove through downtown Philadelphia, his radio described protest demonstrations at the stadium. Rushing over, he found the community’s Woodstock Civil Association had blocked local traffic to dramatize their demand that demolition begin immediately.
“The old ball park is a fire hazard,” said Anita Ray, vice president of the group. “I grew up on this block and the stadium was always a part of my life … but it’s not what it used to be any more. It’s got to go!” City officials at the scene hastily drew Geppert aside and asked whether he could start work the next day if they issued an immediate special contract order.
Despite the short notice, Geppert Brothers’ two big cranes were pulled off other jobs and work began the following morning. That quick response satisfied demonstrators who had vowed to return at 7:30 a.m. that day. But the unexpected haste precluded Geppert’s plans to give the stadium a “big sendoff.”
Geppert felt a memorable tribute was appropriate for this, the final inning for the historic site. He explains, “We wanted to invite the city band, some sportscasters, past athletes who had played there, some members of Connie Mack’s family, and have vendors running around giving out free hot dogs and sodas, just a little bit of what it was before. But I’d been sitting tight, waiting for the contracts and then there wasn’t time. We did have T-shirts made up for our workmen to wear with our name on the back and a photograph of a wrecking ball hitting the stadium on the front. You wouldn’t do this with a normal job, you’d just do the job; period! Because it was the Connie Mack Stadium, well, we wanted to do something special.”
Nor was the stadium’s final fate ignored by news media. Local papers featured stories and photographs of the protest action and start of demolition. Geppert recalls that local TV sportscaster, Tom Brookshire, of Channel 10 “was here about a month before they even let bids on the job, but he must have anticipated it. He stood in the weeds in the infield with the mini-camera and described teams that had played there, who hit home runs, what records were made, and then added that a fellow named Tom Brookshire once broke his leg playing football there!”
Shortly after demolition work began, Joel Spivak’s morning talk show did a 10-minute feature. “Spivak talked from the studio to sportscaster Bill Campbell, who stood near where we were working and reminisced about the ball park’s past,” Geppert tells. “They showed shots of the stadium, our man up in a basket cutting steel and then our trucks being loaded with broken-up concrete. And we did manage to have free soft drinks for the onlookers that day after all.”
So much for the good news! The bad news developed an unexpectedly after TV news covered the story live on “that first morning when we knocked a 12-foot-wide hole in the far wall to get our equipment in,” says Geppert. “The camera showed a man on the sidewalk getting a couple of bricks to send to a relative in Ohio and gave the false impression you could just walk in and take what you wanted. That created quite a problem because out insurance didn’t cover people wandering around the work areas. The old-style wooden seats were bolted to the stands and we had to torch the bolts from the concrete, which takes time. We had to tell people we needed to be paid for the labor to do that and they’d have to wait for seats or bricks at the sidewalk. They were furious, some of them. We had to call the police twice!”
The Philadelphia Historical Society asked Geppert to try to preserve three ornamental limestone friezes of a wreath encircling crossed bats, with a catcher’s mask and smaller wreath below. The Baseball Hall of Home also expressed great interest in these. Geppert managed to save them all, but estimates the cost of painstaking removal at around $4,000 for each set and hopes some arrangement can be worked out to defray this expense.
To Geppert Brothers’ general superintendent, Dick Geppert, and job site superintendent, Pete Solis, the demolition challenge was technically uncomplicated. Bleachers of concrete, steel columns supporting a steel roof, steel and concrete walkways offered no problems to a five-ton wrecking ball and 90- and 65-ton long-boomed cranes. A 983 Cat loader with four-yard demolition bucket loaded concrete into their big trailers for dumping at a riverfront pier filling site. First they torched out the twisted girders and roof sections that were dangerously weakened by the 1971 fire, and then the wrecking ball broke up the concrete stands. Though other commitments precluded using both cranes the whole time, the crew of 10 men nevertheless completed the job in 12 weeks. The five-and-three-quarter-acre site was reduced to a flat lot covered with four inches of clean fill dirt. The grand old stadium was gone!
“In the wrecking business, you take down all kinds of structures,” Gepper reflects thoughtfully, “but a job like the Connie Mack Stadium may come only once in a lifetime. Think of all the excitement that went on there and all the dreams that passed through it. It’s very sad that it had to come down, but we know people get old and die and this is what happens to buildings, too.”