Citizens Bank Park has given us 20 years of great memories, should be good for 100: Phillies owner John Middleton.

Jim Thome built it. Ryan Howard filled it. Bryce Harper made it cool again.

With apologies to the Palestra, my favorite site in all of sports; Franklin Field, still venerated and relevant; and the legion of parks, arenas, and stadiums of both recent and distant memory, no edifice in the considerable history of Philadelphia sports has been as rousing a success as Citizens Bank Park. It grows more beautiful with each opening day, from the cross-hatched pattern cut into the outfield grass to the skyline beyond its stately outfield gates. It celebrated its 20th anniversary Friday, and its current caretaker, Phillies owner John Middleton, figures the Bank is just getting started.

“There’s no reason this can’t be here 100 years,” Middleton said.

Awesome.

And, why not?

Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago are 112 and 110 years old, respectively. The Bank was built better.

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In an era in which most teams insist on ever newer nests, often subsidized or supported by municipalities — the 76ers want to rebuild part of Center City with a $1.55 billion arena complex, and the Flyers and Phillies are partnering in a $2.5 billion project to refresh the sports complex in South Philly — it’s refreshing that the Phillies are just getting comfortable.

“Baseball stadiums age well, like a great wine,” Middleton said. “Other sports arenas don’t. There’s a patina that develops in a baseball stadium, like Fenway. Wrigley’s great, too.”

Middleton said that as long as he keeps the guts of the complex modernized — the plumbing, the HVAC, the electrical systems — the Bank should remain viable.

Wonderful. The cathedral in our city at which three generations have come to fall in love with baseball again will remain to host more generations of Red Octobers and bedlam at the Bank. There are mothers and fathers who came as children now bringing their own children to the seats where they captured a Jim Thome memory, maybe with a Nanna or Pop-Pop who is now just a memory themselves. The place where we’ve sweated in the chill of championship autumns and cried in the rain and had our blood run cold, then hot again, in the same Bryce Harper at-bat will afford the same sensations to our grandchildren.

What a priceless gift.

Middleton spoke as Zack Wheeler, the franchise’s best pitcher since Steve Carlton, threw the first pitch. Wheeler is emblematic of the class of player and extent of expenditure the Bank affords the Phillies: He just signed a contract extension that will pay him $244 million from 2020 to 2027.

He signed it, in part, because he loves it here.

“I want to be here,” said Wheeler after he signed an extension on March 4.

So does Harper, who has asked to extend his deal even though seven seasons remain. So does Trea Turner, who cited the Bank’s electric playoff atmosphere in 2022 as a reason he signed a 10-year free-agent contract to come to Philly after that season.

Neither Middleton nor his partners could have envisioned the Bank’s being such a lure when the idea of it was conceived 30 years ago.

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Middleton joined the Phillies’ ownership group in 1994, then spent the next decade, mostly under the lead of then-managing partner David Montgomery, negotiating with other owners, the state, and the city to bring about a $458 million ballpark that could both compete with eyepoppers in Baltimore and Colorado and grow with the times.

When the park finally opened — two years after Pittsburgh’s football and baseball sites and a year after the Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field — the mission was accomplished.

“It was surreal,” Middleton said. “It was just such a relief to have it happen.”

It was worth the wait.

The Bank is easy to get to, easy to get into and out of, close to public transportation, easy to navigate once inside, teeming with entertainment options, and, of course, a great place to watch a ballgame. More than 3 million fans attended in nine of the 20 seasons, including a sellout streak from July 2009 to August 2012. What they’ve watched largely has been worth watching.

That opening day lineup included Thome, Bobby Abreu, and Jimmy Rollins. Kevin Millwood was the staff ace. Phillies legend Larry Bowa was the manager. Within two years the roster would include Howard, Utley, and Cole Hamels, managed by the franchise’s best skipper ever, Charlie Manuel.

The Bank has been the site of the Phillies’ best two-decade span, in which the team reached the playoffs seven times, reached the World Series three times, and won it all once. Yes, that’s the same number of Series appearances as they made in Veterans Stadium, but that took 32 years, and the Vet possessed all the charm of a bus depot.

After years of austerity, the promise of a new ballpark sparked a splurge in spending in 2002. Scott Rolen rebuffed them, so they extended the contracts of Bobby Abreu (six years, $78 million) and Pat Burrell (six years, $50 million) that spring, then, in 2003, signed Thome to a six-year, $87.5 million deal.

Things began poorly in 2004.

On a cold, rainy day, with temperatures in the 40s, the Phillies got booed off the field after a 4-1 loss to the Reds, their sixth loss in seven games; they opened on the road and went 1-5. The only run in the home opener came from their best player, Abreu, whose two-out home run in the first inning also was the club’s first hit in its new home. Thome followed with a double. Burrell stranded him.

Things went worse in 2024 on Friday.

On a cold, windy day, with temperatures in the 40s, the Phillies opened a day late because poor weather, blew the 2-0 lead Wheeler left them after six innings, and lost, 9-3. They did not get booed off the field.

Of course, with Wheeler and Nola fronting a solid rotation, and with Harper, Kyle Schwarber, and Turner topping a terrific lineup, the Phillies remain a playoff favorite. The outlook was bleaker 20 years ago, but then, lots of things were different.

Abreu’s swat presaged what was to come. The Phillies in 2004 shattered the previous franchise record of 101 homers, hitting 113 at the cozy Bank, which ranked third in baseball with 228 total homers allowed. They ranked fifth in 2005. They moved the left-field wall back 5 feet in 2006.

It was the first of many significant changes.

They improved the padding on the center field fence after Aaron Rowand broke his face on it in 2006, a play that remains my favorite Bank moment of the last two decades.

What is yours?

Thome’s 400th home run on June 14, 2004? Shane Victorino’s playoff homers? Chase Utley’s deke play in Game 5 of the 2008 World Series? Brad Lidge closing out the 2008 Series? Roy Halladay’s no-hitter in his playoff debut, against the Reds on Oct. 6, 2010, when he struck out Rolen three times?

How about Rhys Hoskins’ three-run, bat-slam homer against the Braves in Game 3 of the 2022 NLDS? Or Harper’s eighth-inning bomb in Game 5 of the NLCS that sent the Phils to the 2022 World Series?

Not all of the memories are warm or fuzzy. Reliever Jonathan Papelbon grabbed his crotch to insult the crowd in his second-to-last appearance at the Bank in 2014, and a fan threw a beer bottle at a fading Howard in 2016. And, of course, everyone remembers when Howard crumpled coming out of the batter’s box as the last out in Game 5 of the 2011 NLDS, his ruptured Achilles tendon signaling the end of a five-year run of glory.

But with the sweet comes the bitter.

“It’s already become a place where sons have memories with their fathers, or their grandfathers,” Middleton said. “It’s a special place.”

It’s special because of what it was, and what it continues to become. After 15 raucous seasons, McFadden’s — the pregame, in-game, postgame, and anytime hookup joint behind home plate — closed, replaced by a more sedate beer garden. They replaced their giant scoreboard in left field with a more giant scoreboard in 2023, and this year converted the chain-link out-of-town scoreboard that makes up part of right field with a safer, smarter digital screen.

The most welcome change:

Ivy now completely covers the red brick batter’s eye in the fenced-in area beyond center field, which also holds a small forest of trees. It is an organic change in a yard that will only grow lovelier with time.

“I really love that ivy,” Middleton said.

He loves pretty much everything about the Bank. He should love it. We all should.

“It’s part,” he said, “of the Philadelphia fabric.”