Citizens Bank Park  Citizens Bank Park is a baseball stadium located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, within the city's South Philadelphia Sports Complex. It is the home of the Philadelphia Phillies, the city's Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise. It opened April 3, 2004, and hosted its first regular-season baseball game on April 12 of the same year, with the Phillies losing to the Cincinnati Reds, 4–1. The ballpark was built to replace the 33-year-old, now-demolished Veterans Stadium, a football/baseball multipurpose facility, and features a natural grass-and-dirt playing field and a number of Philadelphia-style food stands that serve cheesesteak sandwiches, hoagies, Tastykakes, soft pretzels, Yards and Yuengling beer, and many other regional specialties. The ballpark lies on the northeast corner of the Sports Complex, which includes Lincoln Financial Field, the Wells Fargo Center, and Xfinity Live!, the Center's adjacent theme park and food court. The stadium seats 42,792. In 1999, the Phillies and the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL joined their western Pennsylvania counterparts, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Steelers, in making requests to replace both Veterans Stadium and Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh with separate baseball and football stadiums. Pressure for new Philadelphia stadiums increased after a railing collapsed at The Vet during the 1998 Army–Navy Game, injuring eight cadets. The Pirates threatened to leave Pittsburgh in 1997, helping to convince the state legislature to approve funding for the four proposed stadiums. With their architectural plans already in place, Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh approved the pacts swiftly, but debate in Philadelphia's city leadership continued even as Pittsburgh opened its stadiums, (PNC Park for the Pirates and Heinz Field for the Steelers), in 2001. The Eagles ultimately agreed to the site of a former food warehouse slightly southeast of Veterans Stadium. Lincoln Financial Field celebrated its grand opening in August 2003. The Phillies originally sought to build a downtown ballpark similar to Baltimore's, Denver's, Cincinnati's, Cleveland's, Detroit's and San Francisco's. Various locations were proposed, including Broad and Spring Garden streets; Spring Garden and Delaware Avenue; and next to 30th Street Station on the site of the former main post office. The team and the city announced that the site would be at 13th and Vine streets in Chinatown, just north of Interstate 676, within walking distance of Center City. There was considerable support for a downtown ball park from business and labor and the city at large.