PHILADELPHIA — It poured on the night the Phillies unveiled PhanaVision, delaying the game 40 years ago and perhaps delivering a message from the baseball gods after yet another pillar of the sanctum was destroyed. The Phillies were already playing on fake grass while wearing maroon instead of red and being cheered by a mascot. Now they had the biggest video board in baseball — a 31-by-42-foot screen in the 700 level of Veterans Stadium. It was a whole new ballgame.
“Whatever became of baseball for baseball’s sake?” Stan Hochman wrote under the headline “Lights out for baseball purists” a week before PhanaVison debuted. “Whatever happened to peanuts, popcorn, and Cracker Jacks?”
At Thursday’s home opener, the Phillies will unveil their newest video board, a screen so big that it makes the Vet’s TV look like rabbit ears. The new PhanaVision is 152 feet wide and 86 feet tall, 77% larger than the one it replaced, and as the team says, “the size of 516 Phillie Phanatics.”
