He helped run the Vet for 20 years. Now, pieces of it are in his Delco garage: ‘It was a place I grew to love.’

From the outside, Greg Grillone and Debra Bruner’s house looks like any other in Delaware County. It’s a small, brick residence, with a couple of trees and a neatly cut lawn in front.

But inside, they have enough memorabilia to fill a Veterans Stadium museum. Next to their back door sits a pair of bright blue seats — No. 2 and No. 3 — which once lived at the corner of Broad and Pattison.

In their garage, amid shovels and rakes and pieces of plywood, are piles of documents: contracts with vendors, Veterans Stadium blueprints, incident logs for every Phillies and Eagles game of every year.

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There are signed baseballs on the bar, signed pennants on the walls, Vet hard hats, Vet bomber jackets, and old concert programs, as well as a rolled-up piece of artificial turf. In the middle of their attic, next to a few boxes of Christmas decorations, is a 35-pound replica of the bronze statue “The Kicker” that stood for decades outside the lower level.

The longtime knock on Veterans Stadium was that it was a dump. Philadelphia’s dump, but a dump nonetheless. But to Grillone, it was beautiful, from the day it opened to the day it fell.

His feelings only intensified in 1984, when he was hired to work at the stadium as an assistant manager, eventually transitioning to stadium director in 1992.

Grillone, 77, was technically an employee of the city, but he felt a special kinship with the concrete behemoth.

“I wanted it to be perfect, in everything we did,” he said. “I don’t mean to criticize some of the crew, but in some instances they didn’t have the same care about the place. To them it was a job, and it wasn’t a job for me. It was a place I grew to love.

“That’s why it hurt so much at the end.”

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Long before Grillone knew the Vet would one day be reduced to rubble, he began to preserve it. He’d collect artifacts here and there, and stash them away at his home to keep “as souvenirs.”

At first, Bruner was perturbed. “Oh jeez,” she thought. “This is just what we need.” But two decades later, she’s happy her husband kept so much. It’s a constant reminder of one of the happiest times of their lives.

Working at the Vet “was a dream come true,” Grillone said. “I just never really figured I’d be that lucky.”

Grillone grew up in southwest Philadelphia at 27th and McKean Streets. His childhood was full of local sports landmarks. As a teenager, he’d bike to River Field on weekdays to catch a glimpse of Chuck Bednarik and Tommy McDonald at Eagles practice.

He’d spend summers at Connie Mack Stadium, where dense cigar smoke filled the night air, and autumns at Franklin Field, where everyone seemed to have the best seat in the house.

But to Grillone, none of those compared to the Vet. He attended his first game in 1971, not long after it opened. The multipurpose stadium was unlike anything he’d ever seen, from the color-coded seats to the artificial turf.

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“I was thrilled,” Grillone said. “When people came into town, it was like the crown jewel of the city. I had to take them to the Vet.”

After graduating from Temple’s business school in 1971, Grillone got an internship with the city manager’s office in 1972. He worked his way up from there, becoming an analyst, and then an analyst supervisor.

In the fall of 1984, Grillone was recommended for a job in the city’s recreation department and became the assistant manager at Veterans Stadium. He was in charge of business operations, making sure his tenants (the Eagles and the Phillies) paid rent on time, among other responsibilities.

Because the teams paid a tax based on attendance, Grillone had to keep track of the number of fans at every single game. He and his coworkers maintained a big book of handwritten records, noting the date, how many people came through the turnstiles, and whether there were nonsporting events going on at the time.

He also kept a blue binder of incident logs for every problem that occurred at the Vet during his tenure. Somewhere in that binder — which is now sitting in his garage — is a summer day in 1988, when a broken seat caused Grillone to walk into the Phillies’ guest services office.

It was there that he first met Bruner, who was working for the team as a fan accommodations representative. Grillone kept stopping by, and eventually asked her out on a date after a game in 1989, only to have their plans postponed because of a rain delay.

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They ate soggy pizza from Celebre’s in her office instead. It was perfectly imperfect. Grillone and Bruner got married two years later.

“We were total opposites,” Grillone said. “I grew up in the city, she’s from the suburbs. I’m Catholic, she’s Episcopalian. She was a Republican, I was a Democrat.”

“I told him if there’d never been a Vet,” Bruner said, “we never would have met.”

In 1992, Grillone was promoted to director of Veterans Stadium. His job responsibilities went from managing business operations to managing “everything,” from relationships with the teams to installations to winter projects like replacing every seat ahead of the 1996 All-Star Game.

Some of his most challenging tasks occurred when the Phillies and Eagles seasons overlapped — especially when the Eagles played on Sunday and the Phillies played on Monday.

In the span of 24 hours, Grillone and his crew would have to convert a football field into a baseball field. The outfield seats and third base seats had wheels underneath them, which allowed the group of 40 or 50 maintenance workers to move parts of the lower bowl.

For baseball games, they’d push the outfield seats in, and the third-base line seats back. For football games, they’d push the outfield seats out, and the third base line seats in.

“As soon as the game was over, and they’re coming off the field, we’re coming out there with forklifts,” Grillone said. “There was a crew that took down the foul pole nets, a crew that took down the fence. Somebody would handle third base, somebody would handle the stands.”

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Added Bruner: “He kept a cot in his office.”

Despite the long nights, Grillone loved it. He’d spend more time at the Vet than his job required him to. The director would finish his day by running the steps of the upper and lower bowl. When he needed a break, he’d take a lap around the stadium.

“Some people have a hard day at work, and where do they go? What do they do?” Grillone said. “I always felt fortunate. I could just go out of the office and walk around the place I loved.”

Everything changed in 1994, when Jeffrey Lurie bought the Eagles. The owner made it clear that he wanted a new stadium, insisting that the multipurpose Vet could not be competitive, long-term.

In Grillone’s mind, there wasn’t much he and his employees could do. Because the Vet’s funding came from municipal government — which already had a litany of problems to take care of — it was hard to make any drastic changes.

“They should have set it up as a stadium authority that took in its own income, its own entity,” Grillone said. “But that’s the way it was set up. So, when the mayor has to make choices in terms of programs, is he going to give us $30,000 for new seats or new lights or a new locker room? Or is he going to give $30,000 to the police or firefighters?

“Fundamentally, that was a problem. You’re vying against very important municipal programs. This [stadium] was like a plaything for people. These [players] are making hundreds of thousands, and you’re worried about them? And we can’t keep a library open?”

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The Pennsylvania House and Senate approved partial funding for new Eagles and Phillies stadiums in 1999. Construction began in 2001. The Vet would be demolished in 2004, but that didn’t change Grillone’s approach to his job.

He still slept in a cot in his office. He still worked on those offseason projects to make the Vet just a little bit better.

“I was obviously sad,” he said. “But I loved the place, and I loved it from when I was a kid, when I didn’t even work there. So, I tried to do everything I could to make a bad situation as good as I could.”

In the weeks before the demolition, Bruner noticed a shift in her husband’s demeanor. He would pace around the house. He wasn’t sleeping well. After coming home from a walk-through with the demolition crew, he seemed dejected.

They stayed up until the early morning of March 21, 2004, sharing their favorite stories of the Vet, and wondering what the wreckage would look like after the smoke cleared. A few hours later, they drove to the viewing station on Packer Avenue.

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It was a spectacle. The Phanatic was there, with a few former players and Phillies staff. At about 6:59 a.m., fans began to excitedly count down from 10, as if they were awaiting a rocket launch. At 7 a.m., the columns of the stadium began to fall, one after another.

Sixty-two seconds later, it was gone.

Grillone stood silently, with tears in his eyes. Debra gave her husband a hug.

“It’s going to be OK, honey,” she said. “It’s going to be OK.”

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The Phillies approached Grillone about a job, but he was close to receiving his pension with the city, so he stayed in government. In 2004, he went back to his role as an analyst. It wasn’t an easy transition.

Part of what he loved about working at the Vet was how quickly things moved. Almost every night, there would be a game, a concert, or some other event; a tangible result of all the hard work he and his staff had put in.

Working for the city manager’s office was full of red tape.

“We would review budgets, and we review proposals, and then lots of times, stuff just got put on the shelf and collected dust,” Grillone said. “Because that’s how government is.”

He left after 16 months. Grillone had a few other jobs, teaching business at Neumann University, and working as a borough manager in Norwood and Upland. He finally retired in 2023.

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Every once in a while, Bruner will find her husband in their garage, rummaging through his old Veterans Stadium boxes. It doesn’t take much for the memories to start flowing back.

It was his life, after all. Not just the place he worked, but where he met his wife, where he exercised, and sometimes, where he slept. He will never be able to do any of that again. But at his small, brick home in Delaware Country, Veterans Stadium is never too far away.

The Inquirer is running a series on the stories behind unique pieces of sports memorabilia. If you’d like to submit an idea, please email [email protected].