A balcony collapse at a Phillies game killed 12 and injured 200 on this week in Philly history
“The street was piled four deep with bleeding, injured, shrieking humanity struggling amid the piling debris," The Inquirer reported the day after the Aug. 8, 1903, collapse.
Philadelphia and Boston were tied, 5-5.
It was the second game of a doubleheader on Aug. 8, 1903, and the more than 10,000 fans who paid 25 or 50 cents for admission got two games for the price of one at National League Park.
The sunny, mid-70s summer afternoon kicked off with the Phillies losing the opener, 5-4, in extra innings. But by the fourth inning of game two, an old-fashioned slug match was breaking out between two bad teams at North Broad Street and West Lehigh Avenue.
Phillies pitcher Bill Duggleby was on the mound around 5:40 p.m. when Boston’s Joe Stanley walked to the plate, with two outs and a man on first in a tied ball game.
And in left field, fans heard cries from the street below.
The rise
The Philadelphia Ball Club Ltd. played its first season in the National League in 1883. Four years later, they had their own park, built mainly of wood, at Broad and Lehigh. Then it burned to the ground in 1894.
Learning from past mistakes (but not all of them), they built a new park a year later on the same site. A combination of brick and steel, but it still included wood. Regardless, the ballpark was celebrated as a modern marvel that could hold 18,500.
Quickly, it also became known for hosting a lot of losing baseball.
The fall
Some neighborhood kids started teasing two drunks, and one lashed out in anger. He grabbed the hair of a 13-year-old girl, who started screaming.
About 300 fans rushed toward a wooden balcony.
The wooden supports beneath the ramshackle walkway snapped, and the balcony collapsed. Several hundred spectators plummeted about 30 feet to 15th Street below.
“In the twinkling of an eye,” The Inquirer reported the following day, “the street was piled four deep with bleeding, injured, shrieking humanity struggling amid the piling debris.”
The game was halted, and fans rushed the field in panic. A few players grabbed bats for protection.
In the end, 12 fans, ranging in age from 24 to 63, were killed. More than 200 were injured.
Newspapers would nickname it “Black Saturday.”
More than 80 lawsuits were filed, but all were eventually dismissed. A panel of builders ruled that rotting hemlock timbers were the problem, but the courts determined that the rush of spectators ultimately caused the collapse.
In terms of legacy, wood was no longer used as a primary building material in future ballparks. And 122 years after the fact, it remains one of the deadliest stadium disasters in U.S. history.
The remainder of the second game was canceled. It didn’t count against either team, but it didn’t make a difference.
Everyone had lost.