Junior-Sized Baseball Park is for Youngest Phillies Fans

For many families, love for the local sports team starts in childhood. When a kiddo sees mom and dad rooting for the Phillies, they become fans themselves. Before you know it, you have a tiny diehard wearing his or her licensed jersey and baseball cap and, in the grandest Philly tradition, talking smack to other kids at school who dare to like rival teams.

The Yard is a small baseball park for the youngest Phillies fans. Photo credit: Metcalfe

The Phillies have catered to their youthful fans with a miniature baseball park that’s right next to the big one! The 13,000-square-foot park, dubbed “The Yard,” just opened this season near Citizens Bank Park in time for Opening Day. For tots, The Yard is a place where they can live out their dreams of baseball greatness… or at least have a lot of fun.

Ioana Botzoman, a spokesperson for Metcalfe, the design firm behind The Yard, says that the baseball park is intended to remind kids about the big park adjacent to it. “The Yard was carefully planned to be a seamless extension of the main venue, avoiding the feeling of an add-on entertainment element through several design strategies,” Botzoman said in the statement, saying as well that the mini baseball park utilizes the same materials, finishes and architectural elements of the real Citizens Bank Park for the most authentic experience. The firm even went so far as to rotate the small baseball park in such a way that the view of the skyline is exactly the same as at Citizens Bank Park.

What can kids do at The Yard? From Curbed Philadelphia: “They’ll be able to play Wiffle Ball on The Yard’s 70-foot green, shoot foam hotdogs from a launcher at targets on the wall and test their pitch speed with a radar gun. There’s even a 30-foot climbing wall with a design of the Philly skyline.”