By Julia Train
When attending a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park, it’s impossible to miss the furry, green, muppet-like creature known as the Phillie Phanatic interacting with the crowd, players, coaches and umpires.
While he’s a Philadelphia sports icon, he wasn’t the first.
The team’s original mascot– or mascots– were Philadelphia Phil and Phillis, and they are enjoying their retirement in Atlantic County.
For over 43 years, the duo has lived at Storybook Land, a children’s storybook-themed amusement park in Egg Harbor Township.
The brother and sister were first introduced at the same time that the team moved to Veterans Stadium in 1971, as an attempt to add entertainment to the games for families to enjoy.
At the time of opening, Veterans Stadium was a state-of-the-art ballpark, complete with wall-to-wall AstroTurf, new luxury superboxes, 140 usherettes, and a $3 million scoreboard that played comical electronic cartoons while keeping the scores updated.
The idea for the double mascot came from Bill Giles– who, at the time, had moved from working as promotions director for the Houston Astros to be the Phillies’ special effects executive and would later be the team’s executive and part-owner. With that, their homerun spectacular was born.
While there were costumes for the mascots, there were actually animatronic versions that put on a show after a Phillie hit a homerun.
The 15-foot statues, dressed in colonial-era garb as a nod to the city’s history and made of concrete and fiberglass, were originally located in front of the center field wall at the stadium, ready for their show.
After a player hit a homerun, Philadelphia Phil appeared between the boards in center field and hit a baseball that traveled toward the message board in right-center and struck a replica of the Liberty Bell. The bell glowed, with its crack lighting up.
The ball continued and hit Philadelphia Phillis, knocking her down and causing her to pull a lanyard on a cannon. The cannon then exploded and after the smoke and sound effects, a colonial-era American flag dropped down and the dancing waters started to the tune of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
This was a major and popular production for the 1970s, but when the Phanatic was introduced in 1978, Phil and Phillis were gone within the next year. With that, the home run spectacular was torn down and the twins were stored in the bowels of the Vet.
In 1980, Giles, who was then the Phillies’ vice president, held a Spring Clearance Sale, where fans were able to purchase leftover shirts, hats, backpacks, posters, license plates, pennants and… Phil and Phillis themselves. Up for sale were both the former mascots’ costumes and the actual statues used in the home run spectacular for eight years.
Don Horrow, an owner of a Dodge dealership in Waterford Township, NJ, bought the statues and the cannon that Phillis let explode.
Horrow didn’t remember how much he paid for them, but he knew the transportation cost more than the duo. Within a year, Esther and John Fricano, the owners of Storybook Land bought the statues for $1,000 and Horrow kept the cannon.
In February 2004, Veterans Stadium was demolished and the Fricano Family purchased a pair of seats from it in November 2003.
Today, 43 years later, instead of the home run spectacular, the light-up Liberty Bell display located at right-center field of Citizens Bank Park, swings and chimes while the twins remain in the park with the pair of seats sandwiched between them.
