On Tuesday, as 43,419 fans watched the Phillies-Rockies game, Bob Lukens, friend Karen Trullinger and six teen-age boys - his, hers, and neighborhood add-ons - claimed Section 627, Row 2.
Lukens, 43, of Aston, Delaware County, did go to the Vet last year. But only half as often as his dozen trips in '93.
"The Phillies are my No. 1 team, do or die," Lukens said. "But the fans are different this year. They talk baseball. Last year, you were at the game, but you weren't into it."
In Row 3 were three young men who just moved to the area to work at a chemical firm in Delaware. They were baseball fans, but strangers to the Vet.
Sheldon Epstein, of Voorhees, N.J., explained his presence, and the large crowd around him, in one word: "Bandwagon."
Said Todd Shegog, who just moved to Wilmington after grad school in Pittsburgh: "You wouldn't see this many people in Pittsburgh when the Pirates were in the playoffs."
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Sometime during batting practice tonight, the 2,500,000th fan of 1993 will stroll into the Vet (attendance was 2,493,625 through Wednesday). It's only the fifth season, and the first since 1980, that the Phillies have reached this lofty plateau.
Advance sale for the remaining 16 home games guarantees the Phillies will sell more tickets than the 1979 record of 2,775,001, says Richard Deats, Phillies vice president for ticket operations. He says the club has a solid chance to reach 3 million during the final home stand Sept. 24-26.
The figures are somewhat a case of apples and oranges. A new National League rule lists the attendance as all tickets sold, not just fans through the turnstiles.
Even with that slight inflation, the Phillies are on track to draw a million more than last year.
So who are those guys? And gals? And boys and girls?
