An emotional reopening day for the Phillies, their fans, and their workers | David Murphy

There was sunshine and a stiff southeasterly wind on Thursday morning when Harold Palmer walked out of his door at 20th and Packer and left the endless winter behind. First pitch was still five hours away, but he was already running late. For more than 12 months, the stadium 10 blocks west had loomed like a prehistoric fossil, recognizable in form yet unmistakably dead. He’d got married, turned 60, survived a pandemic. After two long years, the time had finally arrived to breathe baseball back to life.

“It’s so odd,” said Palmer, one of the hundreds of Phillies game-day employees who spent last spring and summer shut out of Citizens Bank Park as Major League Baseball staged its season without fans. “I would always kid around with my kids – if the lights are on at the ballpark, I’m supposed to be there. For 42 years, I’m used to planning my summers knowing that I gotta be at the ballpark.”

They returned late Thursday morning, streaming through the gate on Darien Street, leaning into a headwind that cut a diagonal current from center-left to right: fans, workers, first responders, each of their steps a giant leap on the long road back to normal. They wore heavy coats and winter hats and J.T. Realmuto jerseys. They carried walkie-talkies and cans of beer and kids in neon green Phanatic hats and banners emblazoned with the words, “Yo boys, we are back.”

» READ MORE: Phillies fans return home to Citizens Bank Park for the first time since 2019

And they were. They were back. Nine thousand of them, give or take a few: men, women, boys, girls, seniors, toddlers. The stadium was three-quarters empty, but it had rarely felt so full. That’s not an exaggeration. It felt like one when you looked at all of the blue seats, but then you heard the place erupt as the first pitch cracked off Ronald Acuna Jr.’s bat and died a lazy death in center. For nine innings, the place pulsed with an energy that was two years in the making. On Andrew McCutchen’s leadoff single. On Alec Bohm’s sacrifice fly. On J.T. Realmuto’s run-scoring dribbler through the right side of the infield.

In the eighth inning, they held their collective breaths as the time for the Phillies bullpen arrived. They stood and screamed for Jose Alvarado’s 0-2, two-out pitch, and they moaned as it bounced off Austin Riley’s ankle. Five pitches later, Cristian Pache swung through a 2-2 changeup, and the long wait to exhale ended.

While the 2021 Phillies will apparently continue to emphasize the visceral experience of relief in their approach to late-innings pitching, even this bullpen could not dampen the mood of those who were finally in person to feel it. When Jean Segura bounced his walk-off chopper down the line, the dugout emptied and the place erupted.

“I tell you what, eighty-eight-hundred people can make a lot of noise in a stadium built for 44,000,” manager Joe Girardi said. “God, it was great. It was great to see. It was great to hear. And I look forward to Saturday.”

» READ MORE: Phillies beat Braves, 3-2, in 10th inning behind rebuilt bullpen

The secret ingredient in the Phillies’ game-day experience has always been the workers who make the operation go. The greeters, the ushers, the security guards. Folks like Harold Palmer.

He grew up in South Philly and never left. Spring meant half-ball on the courts by Methodist Hospital and walks to see the Phillies at the Vet. At 17 years old, he figured that, instead of sneaking in, he might as well get paid. Every spring for 41 years he reported for duty, working his way up from security in 1979 to his current role as Director of Premium Services. He never imagined he’d need to wait this long to see opening day No. 42.

After Major League Baseball announced last March 16 that it was indefinitely delaying the start of the 2020 season, Palmer realized that he was about to find out how the other half spends its spring and summer. At first, that meant keeping one eye on the stadium and the other on the rapidly unfolding panic. During the evening, he and his wife, Maureen, would walk past the long line of cars that snaked down Pattison Ave toward a row of white medical tents rising eerily from the macadam.

“Seeing that there was like a sci-fi movie,” Palmer said. “It really was.”

» READ MORE: Jean Segura makes sure the Phillies’ opening-day performance is a crowd pleaser | Bob Brookover

The weather warmed and the cases dropped and the worst-case scenarios began to feel more distant. The testing site was replaced by a concert stage as the Phillies hosted a series of drive-in concerts. The events gave Palmer an opportunity to do some work and reunite with members of his team, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was locked out of his summer home.

“It was so bizarre,” Palmer said, “because it’s a family. It’s not a job. You sit here and watch what’s going on on the field, but back here, it’s a family. And for people to be apart from each other? It just was not a good feeling.”

But that made the sun on Thursday morning feel all the more sweeter. In the week leading up to the game, Palmer had jokingly reminded the members of his team that there should be no hugging and kissing when they reunited. But then, on Thursday, he fielded a call from his daughter as she was en route to the game. She started crying when she saw the stadium.