Walls of the Vet Resound With Glory

Posted April 7, 2003

A couple of days prior to The Vet being imploded Mike DiMuzio invited us to into the stadium to photograph THE WALL that is referred to in Westcott's Book.

Here's an interesting story about something related to Veterans Stadium that will be missed once the Philadelphia Phillies move to their new stadium. Maybe 25 years ago, ballplayers would hang out in the grounds crew's lounge after games, eating and drinking and talking baseball. Why not get them to sign the wall? The tradition was started by Gary Tinneny, a former groundskeeper, and the wall still stands. It once was painted eggshell white, but yellowed over time. The groundskeepers have long since stopped using it as a lounge. The room is now a storage area: rakes and shovels hang on the walls, covering the signatures of legends like Don Drysdale, Mickey Lolich, Bill Giles, and Willie Stargell. There's talk of moving the wall to the new stadium; let's hope it happens.

(Thanks to Mike McCulloh for the article submission.)

By MIKE SIELSKI phillyBurbs.com

As Veterans Stadium’s closing approached, more than 2½ years after her brother’s murder, Donna Persico had a thought. She didn’t know what the Phillies would do or had done with the groundskeepers’ wall. If there was a chance she could get her hands on Gary’s block, the hunk of the wall that he had signed, she could use it as his grave marker.



That was it, though: What were the Phillies going to do with the wall? With all those autographs decorating it, imagine its value on eBay, for example, or at a memorabilia show. Would they put it up somewhere in the new stadium, Citizens Bank Park? This was no easy question. Besides, as Mike DiMuzio points out, the wall was stained from 33 years worth of mud and crud and spit. “It didn’t look good,” he says, and if the Phillies had tried to clean it, they might have washed away some of the signatures.

So, what did the Phillies do with the wall? According to Westcott, nothing. They managed to cut it into large blocks and remove it before the stadium was imploded, but apparently, members of the Phillies’ organization say, it couldn’t be preserved.

“The wall came down and was going to be relocated at the new ballpark,” Westcott says. “Either the wall had deteriorated, or they never found a spot for it — depending on who’s telling the story.”

Frog — who left the Phillies in 2004 and has since filed a lawsuit against them, claiming he was the victim of age discrimination during his final months on the job — is incredulous that the tradition he and his friend began didn’t survive. Gary would have made sure that wall got over to the new park, Frog insists, if he would have had to do it himself.

At C.J. & Eck’s, they still talk about Gary from time to time, especially when Dave Morris and Billy Keenan come by. “To have all that on one wall,” Keenan says, “where you could say, ‘There’s so-and-so,’ and know that they all sat in this mop closet and had beers with this …”

He pauses.
“… goofball, and for that reason and for posterity reasons, it should have been saved.”
Somehow, it wasn’t. And so there’s no hint of the wall at Citizens Bank Park, open almost three full Phillies seasons now. And Gary Tinneny’s body lies in an unmarked grave, buried in the same cemetery plot as his father. Now that she knows the wall is gone, Donna says, she will have to purchase a marker for her brother.