Even for Philadelphia, home office of the bizarre and the shameful, this was beyond embarrassing.
Even for Veterans Stadium, that notorious career-killer of football players, this was a reputation-wrecker.
Even for the NFL, which trumpets itself for enduring the vilest and most daunting of playing conditions, this was the most curious and ironic of excuses: Game called on account of, of all things, faulty carpeting.
Another night of civic shame.
The new artificial playing surface at the Vet, converted for football for the first time, turned out to be a mushy morass of treachery, riddled with small potholes and bubbles and Bermuda Triangle soft spots.
Those portions of the field involving the infield cutouts and pitcher's mound were open invitations to blown knees and turned ankles. The playing conditions were so hazardous that there was unanimous agreement among players, coaches, officials and club brass to postpone last night's preseason game between the Eagles and Baltimore Ravens.
The decision was absolutely correct, by the way.
Portions of the field were as unstable as pudding.
Thus does the city take another one square in the public-relations chops, as though we really needed it.
Thus does the Vet reinforce its reputation as the kitty-litter box of athletic venues.
This being Philadelphia, no one wanted to raise his hand and say, "My fault."
The city and the Eagles and the Phillies and the turf people all sidestepped and backpedaled furiously, desperately passing around the responsibility and the accountability.
The mystifying part is that the problem apparently was not discovered until the players went out to warm up about 5:30 p.m., an hour and a half before the scheduled kickoff, even though the Phillies had played a day game Sunday and there was ample time for conversion from baseball to football.
"I was told by a league official that he had examined the field and told the city that it was unacceptable," said Joe Banner, the Eagles' president. "I was told by the city that it had been corrected."
The spinning wheel of blame went round and round.
Banner was livid, justifiably so.
Asked whether he was confident that this could not happen again, he snapped, "I haven't been confident in three years."
The crowd first was told that kickoff had been moved from 7:30 to 8:05. At 8:08 came the announcement that the game was "temporarily suspended." At 8:24, it was announced that there would be no game.
The Vet was only about half full at the time. Some left. Some hurled beverage missiles. Some fought. Some booed. It was ugly, but it could have been much uglier had the turnout been larger and had there been more time to drink.
The basic problem was that the dirt surface under the new carpet was uneven and lumpy.
"It was totally unacceptable," Banner said.
Yes, it was.
And Banner and coach Andy Reid and player representative Troy Vincent had to stand up before a sweating horde of reporters and sheepishly apologize for conditions over which they had no control.
For their part, the Ravens were more than magnanimous. They could have taken potshots at the Birds, the stadium, and the city. They did not.
But remember that HBO is doing a twice-a-week, hour-long drop-in diary on the Ravens. They just got handed a juicy 30 minutes, and the city once more will take a national hit as bungling and inept.
"This has to be addressed," Reid said.
Yes, it does. But the hole for the new stadium hasn't even been dug yet.
So this pigsty has two more years to serve as civic embarrassment.
At least.
What seems unfathomable is that there wasn't some sort of rehearsal.
"I'm told," Banner said, "that there was a partial walk-through and conversion about a month ago."
That must have been a rousing success.
Banner noted that over the years the Birds have been accused of manufacturing or magnifying problems in the Vet in an effort to gain public backing for a new stadium.
"We have no need to do that," he said. "As we have been saying for a long time, the conditions in which this professional football team has been forced to play are absolutely unacceptable and are an embarrassment to the city of Philadelphia."
Yes, they are.
And they are only getting worse.
Last night, 18 media wretches were stuck on the press elevator for 40 minutes in claustrophobic conditions. Once, the elevator lurched and dropped. The heat approximated Hades. They said they could detect no great urgency to rescue them.
For my part, the occupant for lo these many years of Seat 12-B can report that since last season, an engineering marvel of a spider web has been constructed in a corner of his area. The rust spots in the beams above have widened and become darker. A liquid of unidentified origin has emerged from the concrete floor; usually it doesn't appear until late November, at which time it congeals and freezes into a small skating rink.
And there is something leaking onto the top of 12-B's head. As there are frequently birds flitting about, he can only hope it is rainwater.
This was supposed to be a night for the Birds. They were going to debut their first-liners against the defending Super Bowl champions, just enough to whet the appetite. Then Reid was going to see if he had deep depth.
It was going to be the first night of unfriendly fire.
Instead, it turned out to be a night of shame and embarrassment.
It turned out to be a night when you sighed and said: "Only in Philadelphia ..."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Lyon's e-mail address is blyon@phillynews.com.
Even for Veterans Stadium, that notorious career-killer of football players, this was a reputation-wrecker.
Even for the NFL, which trumpets itself for enduring the vilest and most daunting of playing conditions, this was the most curious and ironic of excuses: Game called on account of, of all things, faulty carpeting.
Another night of civic shame.
The new artificial playing surface at the Vet, converted for football for the first time, turned out to be a mushy morass of treachery, riddled with small potholes and bubbles and Bermuda Triangle soft spots.
Those portions of the field involving the infield cutouts and pitcher's mound were open invitations to blown knees and turned ankles. The playing conditions were so hazardous that there was unanimous agreement among players, coaches, officials and club brass to postpone last night's preseason game between the Eagles and Baltimore Ravens.
The decision was absolutely correct, by the way.
Portions of the field were as unstable as pudding.
Thus does the city take another one square in the public-relations chops, as though we really needed it.
Thus does the Vet reinforce its reputation as the kitty-litter box of athletic venues.
This being Philadelphia, no one wanted to raise his hand and say, "My fault."
The city and the Eagles and the Phillies and the turf people all sidestepped and backpedaled furiously, desperately passing around the responsibility and the accountability.
The mystifying part is that the problem apparently was not discovered until the players went out to warm up about 5:30 p.m., an hour and a half before the scheduled kickoff, even though the Phillies had played a day game Sunday and there was ample time for conversion from baseball to football.
"I was told by a league official that he had examined the field and told the city that it was unacceptable," said Joe Banner, the Eagles' president. "I was told by the city that it had been corrected."
The spinning wheel of blame went round and round.
Banner was livid, justifiably so.
Asked whether he was confident that this could not happen again, he snapped, "I haven't been confident in three years."
The crowd first was told that kickoff had been moved from 7:30 to 8:05. At 8:08 came the announcement that the game was "temporarily suspended." At 8:24, it was announced that there would be no game.
The Vet was only about half full at the time. Some left. Some hurled beverage missiles. Some fought. Some booed. It was ugly, but it could have been much uglier had the turnout been larger and had there been more time to drink.
The basic problem was that the dirt surface under the new carpet was uneven and lumpy.
"It was totally unacceptable," Banner said.
Yes, it was.
And Banner and coach Andy Reid and player representative Troy Vincent had to stand up before a sweating horde of reporters and sheepishly apologize for conditions over which they had no control.
For their part, the Ravens were more than magnanimous. They could have taken potshots at the Birds, the stadium, and the city. They did not.
But remember that HBO is doing a twice-a-week, hour-long drop-in diary on the Ravens. They just got handed a juicy 30 minutes, and the city once more will take a national hit as bungling and inept.
"This has to be addressed," Reid said.
Yes, it does. But the hole for the new stadium hasn't even been dug yet.
So this pigsty has two more years to serve as civic embarrassment.
At least.
What seems unfathomable is that there wasn't some sort of rehearsal.
"I'm told," Banner said, "that there was a partial walk-through and conversion about a month ago."
That must have been a rousing success.
Banner noted that over the years the Birds have been accused of manufacturing or magnifying problems in the Vet in an effort to gain public backing for a new stadium.
"We have no need to do that," he said. "As we have been saying for a long time, the conditions in which this professional football team has been forced to play are absolutely unacceptable and are an embarrassment to the city of Philadelphia."
Yes, they are.
And they are only getting worse.
Last night, 18 media wretches were stuck on the press elevator for 40 minutes in claustrophobic conditions. Once, the elevator lurched and dropped. The heat approximated Hades. They said they could detect no great urgency to rescue them.
For my part, the occupant for lo these many years of Seat 12-B can report that since last season, an engineering marvel of a spider web has been constructed in a corner of his area. The rust spots in the beams above have widened and become darker. A liquid of unidentified origin has emerged from the concrete floor; usually it doesn't appear until late November, at which time it congeals and freezes into a small skating rink.
And there is something leaking onto the top of 12-B's head. As there are frequently birds flitting about, he can only hope it is rainwater.
This was supposed to be a night for the Birds. They were going to debut their first-liners against the defending Super Bowl champions, just enough to whet the appetite. Then Reid was going to see if he had deep depth.
It was going to be the first night of unfriendly fire.
Instead, it turned out to be a night of shame and embarrassment.
It turned out to be a night when you sighed and said: "Only in Philadelphia ..."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Lyon's e-mail address is blyon@phillynews.com.
