READING, Pa. – It’s been seven years without a playoff game, but Reading fans never stopped believing.<\/p>\n
The team drew nearly 380,000 fans this season.<\/p>\n
Tuesday night, those fans got something they haven’t seen since 2019: postseason baseball. The Reading Fightin Phils entered the playoffs for the first time since 2019.<\/p>\n
“It’s been seven years, and it was a long seven years,” said season ticket holder Maryann Jagielski.<\/p>\n
It was an exciting day in Baseballtown.<\/p>\n
“It’s about time they get in,” said season ticket holder Steve Madl.<\/p>\n
After six seasons, and their last outright championship win back in 1995, fans are excited to see the R-Phils take the field.<\/p>\n
“They’ve got Ford, the top prospect here this year, so it’s looking good,” Madl said.<\/p>\n
Fans like Francis “Ducky” Turner, a former stadium commissioner and longtime R-Phils fan, are hopeful.<\/p>\n
“We got a pretty good team here. We might have a shot of it,” Turner said.<\/p>\n
Even at 92 years old, he’ll be standing in section 6 like always, watching his favorite team.<\/p>\n
“I think we’re very fortunate that this area, that the people that are involved just, just love the Reading Phillies,” Turner said.<\/p>\n
Even after seven years of waiting, the Fightin Phils are still seeing strong attendance. Jagielski says it’s because of FirstEnergy Stadium’s perfect atmosphere.<\/p>\n
“They cater to the younger generation; they cater to the kids. They make it fun for the kids. It’s a family day out,” Jagielski said.<\/p>\n
Fans like Michael Wenz and Lucas Daniels said they try to watch every R-Phils game from the stands.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m excited to see Gage Wood,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cI hope he does great tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m very, very excited,\u201d Wenz said. \u201cI’m excited to see what can happen. I’m excited to see how far we can go and what we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – It’s been seven years without a playoff game, but Reading fans never stopped believing. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[12271,4662,18105,1510,11492,24584,10167,128,130,129,44158,119436],"class_list":["post-287031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-attendance","tag-baseball","tag-championship","tag-family","tag-fans","tag-firstenergy-stadium","tag-playoffs","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-fightin-phils","tag-season-ticket-holder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}