Phillies fans return home to Citizens Bank Park for the first time since 2019

Never before have boos sounded so comforting and so pure as they did at Citizens Bank Park on Thursday, when the Phillies welcomed fans back for the first time in 18 months for their opening-day game against the Atlanta Braves.

Though COVID-19 protocols capped attendance at 8,800 — or 20% of the stadium’s capacity — and mandatory face masks muffled fans’ screams, their unified boos and cheers still filled the stadium, and at times, felt like a collective sigh of relief.

For just a few hours in this corner of South Philadelphia, Philly felt like Philly again.

Of course, 2021 — the slightly-less-weird-but-still-totally-awkward cousin of 2020 — wouldn’t let opening day pass without conspiring with Mother Nature to pull an April Fools’ joke on players and fans by dropping temps into the 40s and revving winds up to blustering speeds.

But this is Philly, so that didn’t stop a few fans from showing up in shorts and a T-shirt, though most came in heavy coats armed with blankets and hand warmers to fight the chill.

Among the first people inside the stadium shortly after 1 p.m. were members of the Phandemic Krew, a group of fans who watched the Phillies play through the stadium gates last season when they couldn’t be inside with the team. With the support of the Phillies, the Krew now has their own cheering section — 245 — inside the ballpark this season.

“This is like Christmas,” said Krew cofounder Brett MacMinn, 44, of Audubon, Camden County. “No, this is like if they canceled Christmas one year and then you have two Christmases in one to make up for it.”

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Oscar Alvarado, 39, also of Audubon, the other cofounder of the Krew, said that what excited him most about the game was getting to see all the people who make it possible.

“I can’t wait to see the ushers, the concessions stand workers, everyone,” Alvarado said. “We want to thank them for helping us along the way while we were outside the ballpark. Everybody supported us.”

As the Phandemic Krew posed for a group picture near the third-base gate, Braves fan Bill Kolbrener, 55, and his son Will, 21, jumped in front of their photo, inciting a chorus of boos.

“We are brave in more ways than one coming here today,” Kolbrener, of Atlanta, said.

A Braves season-ticket holder, Kolbrener promised his son he’d take him to opening day this year, not realizing that it was in Philadelphia. The two arrived early Thursday morning and grabbed a cheesesteak at Pat’s before heading to the ballpark.

“This is a great ballpark and we’ve met really great people,” he said.

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Lifelong Phillies fans Ed and Emily Morales of Northeast Philly brought their daughter, Avery, who is 18 months old — as many months as fans have been away from games — to opening day.

“As soon as tickets went on sale, we bought them,” Emily Morales, 22, said. “We’re going to teach her all about cheering.”

In the stands, bundled up men with tattered notebooks and tiny pencils kept scorecards of their own, while tiny tots toddled through the concourse behind them, many of whom, like Avery Morales, were attending their first-ever Phillies game.

Over at Ashburn Alley, fans in baseball hats and furry green Phanatic caps waited in long (but socially distanced) lines for Tony Luke’s cheesesteaks, Chickie’s & Pete’s Crabfries, and craft beer, as they shared stories about games gone by.

For Sandy Slimm, 73, of Monroe Township, N.J. (who cried a little when her daughter told her she got tickets to Thursday’s game), attending Phillies opening day is a tradition older than the stadium itself.

“Us old people have been coming to opening day since Connie Mack Stadium,” she said. “I’m just so excited to see the guys out on the field.”

After the players took the field — the Braves to a healthy round of boos, the Phillies to rapturous cheers — Kane Kalas, the son of the late and beloved Phillies announcer Harry Kalas, sang the national anthem in front of the statue of his father and an all-service honor guard representing all five branches of the military.

Frontline heroes, 41 of them from bus drivers to nurses, were honored on the field by the team, and 11-year-old Ellen Salome of West Chester, who received a heart transplant in 2019 through Nemours Children’s Health System, threw out the ceremonial first pitch to the Phanatic, who then got on his four-wheeler and rode around the field to cheers.

And, at the end of the game, the Phillies brought home their first win of the season, defeating the Braves, 3-2.

While Philly’s fight against COVID-19 is far from over, for a little while Thursday, it seemed as if we were finally back in the game.