Now is the perfect time for the Phillies to honor Brandon Marsh by constructing The Marshland at Citizens Bank Park
Brandon Marsh homered twice on Monday night against the Pirates at Citizens Bank Park while the Phillies rolled out the full All-Star campaign treatment with a massive “Marsh to the Polls” banner in the outfield.
John Kruk and Tom McCarthy, along with fans, wore oversized fake beards modeled after Marsh’s signature look on the live broadcast, the NBC Sports Philadelphia social media accounts pushing the “everyone’s on the Vote Marsh train” content that made the whole evening feel like a coordinated effort to get the man to the Midsummer Classic.
Through 80 games Marsh is hitting .322 with 95 hits, 14 home runs, 44 RBI, and 48 runs scored, which is the kind of production that makes the All-Star case for him and the campaign is just the Phillies putting a bow on something the numbers already earned.
Brandon Marsh: Marsh To The Polls
I don’t want to sound like an asshole because Brandon Marsh absolutely deserves to be an All-Star and the recognition is long overdue for a guy who has been one of the best outfielders in the National League all season while carrying the Phillies’ lineup through stretches where nobody else was hitting.
The two-homer game on Monday was the latest in a month where Marsh has nine homers in June alone, which is the kind of power surge from a guy who was viewed primarily as a contact hitter and defensive specialist when the Phillies acquired him that tells you the 28-year-old has taken his game to a completely different level this season.
Brandon Marsh Home Run No. 1
Brandon Marsh Home Run No. 2
The beards on the broadcast were funny and the banner in the outfield was a nice touch and the whole campaign has the right energy behind it because Marsh’s personality and his look with the beard and the long hair have made him one of the most recognizable and beloved players on the roster in a way that connects with the fanbase on a level beyond just the box score numbers.
I just want The Marshland to come to life…
The Phillies orchestrating the All-Star campaign with the banner and the beards and the social media push and then hopping online to say the whole city is behind Brandon Marsh isn’t exactly the full truth because the whole city has been behind Brandon Marsh for a while now and the Phillies’ marketing department is late to a party that the fans started without them.
The fanbase has been wearing fake beards to games and chanting Marsh’s name and making him one of the most popular players in the ballpark for two seasons running, and the organization is just now catching up to what the people in the stands already knew, which is that Marsh is the kind of player who deserves the full promotional treatment because he combines elite production with a personality that fans genuinely love.
Which brings me to the thing I’ve been talking about on this site for years at this point and will keep talking about until someone in the Phillies’ front office listens to me. The beards are great. The pictures are great. The “Marsh to the Polls” banner is a nice touch. But what I want, what I have been asking for since Marsh became the fan favorite that he is, is for the Phillies to create The Marshland in the outfield at Citizens Bank Park.
I want the entire left-field section dressed up like a legitimate marsh with tall reeds and cattails along the wall, marsh animals and creatures incorporated into the design, maybe some herons or frogs or whatever wildlife lives in an actual marshland.
I want the Phillies to take a page from the Orioles’ bird bath section in Baltimore and get some water features flowing out there because it’s going to be hot as balls in Philadelphia this week and a full-blown Marshland experience in the outfield with misting stations and swamp-themed concessions and fans dressed in waders would be the most creative and entertaining fan section in all of baseball.
The featured image shows the full effect. Water and all. Here’s another version.
The Marshland would give the Phillies something that no other team in the sport has because every franchise does the generic fan sections with cute names and sponsored signage but nobody has committed to a full environmental transformation of an outfield section themed around a player’s actual name.
The Orioles have the bird bath behind center field and it works because it leans into the team’s identity with a water feature that fans love, and the Phillies could do the same thing but bigger and better and more creative because Brandon Marsh’s name practically begs for it and the fanbase would lose their minds if the organization actually committed to building it.
I’ve been pitching this concept on TLL for a while now and I even put together a design concept for what the Marshland could look like because sometimes you have to show people the vision instead of just describing it.
I want the Phillies to see this and take it seriously because the All-Star campaign is great for a week but the Marshland would be a permanent fan experience that lives at Citizens Bank Park for as long as Marsh is wearing a Phillies uniform, which based on the way he’s playing right now should be for a very long time.
Brandon Marsh Deserves Every Bit of This and More
The man is hitting .322 with 14 homers through 80 games and just put up a nine-homer June that included multiple multi-hit games during the road trip through Washington and New York where he was directly responsible for several comeback wins. His two-run homer that tied the game in the ninth inning on Tuesday in Washington was the swing that started the eight-run rally.
Brandon Marsh has earned the All-Star selection with his bat, his glove, and his personality, and the Phillies’ campaign with the beards and the banner and the broadcast bits is the organization finally matching the energy that the fanbase has been bringing to the ballpark all season.
Now take the next step and build the Marshland because the marketing opportunity is sitting right there in the left-field seats waiting for someone in the front office to have the vision and the commitment to make it happen.
Vote Brandon Marsh. Build the Marshland. Make it happen, Phillies.
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