Randy Wolf is now a professional poker player and the Wolf Pack is still howling after 25 years

A gate opened outside Veterans Stadium, allowing the limousine to pull underneath the colossal concrete structure in South Philadelphia. Inside were a couple just married in Overbrook with a reception waiting for them in Center City. First, Patrick and Amy Wood had to get to the Vet. Randy Wolf was pitching.

The Wolf Pack never missed an inning Wolf pitched in Philadelphia after showing up 25 years ago to the 700 level with a spray-painted bedsheet. Wolf spent eight years with the Phillies after reaching the majors in 1999. The Wolf Pack — a group of eight Wood brothers and their Thompson cousins — howled every night.

Wolf was durable and crafty and made an All-Star team but finished most seasons with an ERA around league average. Yet it’s harder to find a pitcher in Phillies history who had a more dedicated group of fans. One night, they rushed to South Philly in the middle of the game to be in their perch when Wolf surprisingly pitched in relief.

They wore wolf masks, danced in unison after each strikeout, injected life into an often-empty ballpark, and even showed up on their wedding night.

“I remember the wedding photographer yelling at me when I told him that we were leaving and going to the Vet,” Amy Wood said. “He looked at me like I had smacked my face into the wall. ‘You’re going where?’ He was so mad.”

Wolf quickly packed his bag in Scranton in June 1999 and drove to Philadelphia after Ruben Amaro Jr. — then the assistant general manager — called to tell him he was a big leaguer. The Phillies were off that day, so Wolf went to Veterans Stadium, giving himself the chance to be alone in the stadium a day before he debuted.

“I just took it all in and was a geek by myself for 30 minutes,” Wolf said. “That way, when I came back the next day, I wasn’t completely overwhelmed.”

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He pitched the next night into the sixth inning, earning the win against Toronto in his first start. The nerves were gone, and a long career — Wolf pitched for eight teams over 16 big-league seasons and retired in 2015 — was underway. His longevity, Wolf said, was a byproduct of his preparation. He knew how to pitch, threw strikes, and never went into a start without an idea.

“I look back, and I’m kind of curious about how I did it myself,” said Wolf, 47. “Because I had no pitch. I’ll see people today, and they’ll ask me, ‘Well, what was your pitch?’ I didn’t have one. People remember my slow curveball, but that was nothing to write home about. My fastball was in the high 80s, maybe some deception. I don’t know. I just mixed it in there and did the most with what I have.”

Wolf married his wife, Lindsey, in 2016, and they have two children. He doesn’t watch sports, stays busy with his family, and plays professional poker. Wolf, who lives in Southern California, was in Las Vegas in early June for the World Series of Poker. The card game allows Wolf to compete the way he did for so many years on the mound. He left Vegas with a few thousand dollars.

“There’s a lot of parallels between poker and baseball,” said Wolf, who has played the card game for 25 years. “The way I approach pitching is that I wanted to give myself the best chance to succeed with every pitch. It’s the same way with poker.

“I could make the right pitch at the right time in a game. I could break a guy’s bat, and he blooped it over the shortstop’s head and two runs scored with two outs. You could get results-oriented and think, ‘Oh, two runs scored. That’s horrible.’ But it was the right pitch and the right result, it just happened to go over the shortstop’s head. It’s the same thing with poker. I could be in a spot where I could go all-in or make a large bet, and it was the right decision. I have a good idea of what they have. I know I’m an 80% favorite to win this hand. But sometimes, the river kind of kills you, and you get discouraged by the result. But you know that if you keep on making those right decisions, in the long run, it will be OK.”

Wolf’s big league career started four years before the release of Moneyball, the book that started an analytical overhaul of the sport. His career ended with every big-league team having its own analytics department and proprietary systems they use to build rosters. Just like baseball, Wolf saw analytics rise in poker. The guy who loved to prepare has embraced it.

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“It’s really interesting,” Wolf said. “In poker, there’s these solver programs and game theory about how to play every hand and place each bet. What you do and what position you’re in. Then you put it into a computer, and it tells you what percentage of times that will work. It’s very similar to baseball and how they analyze a player or situation. They put in the data and find what the answers should be.”

Some of the Wood brothers were playing pool one night at their brother Al’s home in Drexel Hill when they hatched an idea. The Phillies were amid another losing season and would miss a playoff berth by 20 games. But the new left-hander seemed promising.

The brothers became the Wolf Pack, supporting Wolf at the Vet the same way the “Schill-O-Meter” cheered for Curt Schilling. The Woods were already crazed fans as they spent their summer nights as kids playing basketball while blasting Harry Kalas from a stereo. The Wolf Pack just made sense.

They rolled into Section 739 a few nights later with a hastily made banner — “We took it straight from the linen closet,” Kevin Wood said — and some masks they picked up at a Delaware County costume shop.

“It was against the Pirates, and I see this small group in the 700 level,” Wolf said. “Back then in ‘99, the crowds weren’t very big. So you could hear them all the way out there. I didn’t think anything about it in the beginning, but they continuously went to every game and every game.”

The Wolf Pack was not the first fan group, but it quickly became the most popular and seemed to inspire a phenomenon where every Phils pitcher had a group of fans in the 700 level. The Padilla Flotilla, The Byrd Cage, Mesa’s Faces, and The Duck Pond soon appeared. It became a thing.

“Everybody was exploring their pun dictionary to see what they could do,” Wolf said. “The Padilla Flotilla, even though it’s pronounced ‘Flow-tilla.’ Creative licensing was allowed there. It was pretty cool. I know personally for me, it gave me a cushion and forgiveness when I was maybe having a bad stretch. The Wolf Pack was so lovable that it gave me some leeway when I wasn’t pitching all that great.”

The Wolf Pack had rules: no cursing, no alcohol, and Wolf masks stay on until their guy is lifted from the game. They wanted the group to be for everyone. And it soon felt like more than a group of crazed fans. They got to know Wolf, meeting the pitcher before a few games and exchanging contact info. They shot a car commercial with him, were featured by a Japanese sports show, and were regulars on the broadcast when Wolf pitched.

Wolf grew up near Los Angeles, but his red hair made him look like one of the kids from that big Irish family in Overbrook. The Wolf Pack still keeps in touch with Wolf and saw him earlier this season when the Phillies invited the pitcher back to Citizens Bank Park.

“He looks like he could be a Wood,” Patrick Wood said. “Just with bigger Popeye forearms.”

In April 2002, Tom Wood — the youngest brother — died four days after a car accident on his way home from the Phillies’ home opener. He was 21 years old. Patrick Wood described his little brother as “a hilarious, really good-hearted kid.”

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The family was devastated.

“It’s the most tragic time you could ever go through,” Kevin Wood said. “Other than losing a child, there’s nothing worse than losing a sibling.”

Two days after Tom Wood’s death, the Wolf Pack were at the Vet for Wolf’s first start of the season. They spray-painted their brother’s name onto the banner, wore black arm bands, and carried his memory with them. It was what their brother would have wanted, they said.

The next morning, Wolf attended Tom Wood’s funeral at Our Lady of Lourdes in Overbrook. The pitcher didn’t tell the family he was coming and didn’t do it for attention. He just thought he should be there for the guys who were always there for him.

“I didn’t know them very well, but they dedicated a lot of time to support me,” Wolf said. “I felt like that was the smallest way that I could support them.”

Four years later, Wolf left for the Dodgers, and the fan groups that took over empty sections at the Vet started to fade away. Tickets at the new park were more expensive, and it wasn’t as easy to have 20 people sit together without planning. They’re still around — the Phandemic Krew launched during the pandemic and is going strong — but it’s not like it was in the early 2000s.

But Wolf’s departure after the 2006 season didn’t put the Wolf Pack out to pasture. Wolf left tickets for his old buddies in October 2009 when he pitched for the Dodgers against the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park in the National League Championship Series. It was one last night for the Wolf Pack, who got their wish as the Phillies won while Wolf pitched well. They even gave him a ride to the ballpark.

“In a cop car,” Wolf said, as many of the Wood brothers are police officers. “I asked if I could get a ride in the back of the car, but once I sat back there, I realized that I don’t ever want to get arrested because it’s not comfortable at all. It’s tight, and the seats are plastic. I got a nice little ride. I didn’t need a police escort. I was the police escort.”

Patrick Wood asked Larry Andersen if he could mention on the broadcast in September 2000 that the Wolf Pack were missing their first game because one of the members was getting married.

“And L.A. goes, ‘You wuss. Are you whipped already?’” Patrick Wood said. “He was joking, but I said, ‘All right. Let me talk to the Mrs.’”

Maybe Wood could make it happen. His wedding was in Overbrook and the reception was at the Ballroom at the Ben. There was a window for the bride and groom to stop at the Vet.

“It’s just a swing down Broad Street,” Wood said.

Kevin Wood asked his partner in the Philadelphia Police Department to fill in at the 700 level. He brought some friends — “We had some coverage,” Patrick Wood said — and they performed as the replacement Wolf Pack. They wore tuxedos with their wolf masks and hung a banner congratulating the newlyweds.

Kalas noted on TV in the first inning that this wasn’t the real Wolf Pack, but they did the job. And then the limo arrived.

“I got on an elevator that I didn’t even know existed,” Patrick Wood said. “The door opened up right into the booth where Harry and L.A. were. Like six steps, and we were in the booth.”

The couple — Amy Wood was in a bridal gown, and Patrick Wood was in a black tux — spent the second inning in the broadcast booth while their limo waited in the parking lot. That was an “amazing level of dedication,” Wolf said.

The new Mr. and Mrs. Wood missed their own cocktail hour, but they made it for the reception. The bride and groom were 30 minutes late. It was worth it.

“The lady that was in charge was like, ‘Where are my bride and groom?’” Amy Wood said. “She went into the kitchen and looked up at the TV and said, ‘Oh my God. That’s my bride and groom. They’re at the Phillies game.’ It was fun. It was awesome.”