A basement shrine to Philly sports fandom

Growing up near South Philly’s Marconi Plaza, Stephen Pagano and his friends would hop on their bikes and make the short ride to Veterans Stadium to catch a baseball game.

“That’s when games were $3, $4, and we would just go and hang out there all day long, no cell phones, no pagers, no nothing,” Pagano, 40, said. “Our parents knew where we were, and we’d come home at 9, 10 p.m. That’s how it started.”

The “it” is Pagano’s sports fandom. It runs deep, straight into the basement of the South Philly home he shares with his wife and 2-year-old daughter.

Pagano’s basement fan cave is a shrine to his collecting habit, which not only includes Philadelphia sports memorabilia but also stacks of figurines and other kitschy items, like a Ms. Pac Man machine that reminds him of those early, heady days of life.

Pagano, who works at Jefferson Methodist Hospital as a surgical service attendant, moved into the home in 2011, and the evolution of his basement fan cave has been gradual since. It started with seats from each of the sports stadiums, even Connie Mack Stadium on West Lehigh Avenue and North 21st Street, where the Phillies played before moving to the Vet. First and foremost, Pagano said, he’s a Phillies fan.

Pagano’s collection grew from there to include prized possessions like a 2008 World Series ball that’s signed by nearly the entire Phillies team and game giveaway bobbleheads displayed alongside more exclusive bobbleheads he purchased from FOCO (all Philly-sports themed, of course).

Two of the more unusual pieces in his collection are parts of the erstwhile Vet and Spectrum stadiums. After Veterans Stadium was imploded in 2004, Pagano hopped the fence and grabbed a piece of crumbled concrete from the structure to honor the ballgames of his youth. It sits in his fan cave near a piece of the basketball floor from the Spectrum, which shuttered in 2009, that he and a friend picked up off of Craigslist in 2016.

“It was an 8-by-4 piece. It was humongous,” Pagano said, adding that he and his friend just couldn’t pass it up. “We put it on top of his car, we tied it on, and drove on 76 holding it with our arms.”

They divided it into four pieces, keeping two and selling two for a couple hundred dollars each. “It was a really cool piece. I haven’t seen another one since,” he said.

Pagano has an eye for one-of-a-kind items. Take the hammer he had signed by Broad Street Bullies legend Dave Schultz, who played for the Flyers in the 1970s. Most other fans ask former players to sign pucks, Pagano noted, but he figured why not play off Schultz’s nickname, The Hammer, and have him sign that very item? It’s a quirky standout in his collection.

One of the undertakings Pagano is most proud of is visiting all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums across the country by age 30, a feat he achieved with a group of friends. He even wrote a book about the experience called 30 by 30 that was, for a time, sold at the team store at Citizens Bank Park, Pagano said. The book, which he wrote on his cell phone’s notes app, is on display in his fan cave alongside photos from all 30 of the ballparks.

Pagano is a careful collector but has broad tastes. He said right now he’s hot on Funko Pop! figurines in the box, which he’ll often take to meet-and-greets to be autographed by the people they emulate. Among Pop! figurine boxes signed by former Sixers star Allen Iverson, Flyers great Bobby Clarke, and the Phillie Phanatic, he also has a figurine signed by the so-called “Soup Nazi” from Seinfeld, Yev Kassem, played by actor Larry Thomas.

“If you’ve ever seen The 40-Year-Old Virgin, [you know] everything is worth so much more in the original box. That’s why I keep everything like this,” he said, motioning to the towering mass of figurines. “If I have to sell it or trade it, it’s usually very easy.”

Pagano is always moving things in and out of his collection. There really isn’t anything he wouldn’t part with for the right price, he said.

But there are two items for which he gets unsolicited offers: a bar light celebrating the Phillies’ 2008 World Series win and another boasting the Eagles’ 2018 Super Bowl championship. When Pagano posts photos of his items for sale in buy-and-sell groups on Facebook, fellow Philly sports fans often see these monuments to victory in the background and try to pounce.

“I’ve had crazy offers on the lights,” he said. “But as a collector, I try to keep [them] intact.”

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