Giving 'Em Fitz: The vanishing local-sports landscape

Sometimes, trying to return to sleep in those unsettling hours before dawn, I'll walk my mind through vanished sports landscapes.

The mental exercise required to dredge up details of once-familiar locales can induce sleep as effectively as any pill.

I might enter Connie Mack Stadium beneath the 21st and Lehigh portico, and walk through the clacking turnstiles and down the dank concourse, passing program vendors and dimly lit concession stands, until finally I am climbing a ramp to the lonely left-field bleachers.

Other times I'll exit a car in the vast parking lot at Brandywine Raceway, enter that busy clubhouse where the ever-hopeful chatter of prerace handicappers is as thick as the smoke and move on to a spot at the rail to watch the trotters and the glorious sunsets.

On other nights, the venue might be the Arena; Municipal Stadium; Convention Hall; or the cramped, linoleum-floored gymnasium at the bottom of that steep hill behind St. Pius X school in Broomall.

Sadly, since sports is no less immune to time's fickle nature than newspapers or malls, there's no shortage of stops on these nocturnal tours.

The drill leaves me wondering what now-popular landmarks, what games and traditions will exist only in the mind's eye a half-century from now.

Can Franklin Field endure many more decades as an outdated, little-used facility that sits on increasingly valuable real estate?

Will historic area clubs - and the game itself - survive the steep decline in golf interest? Will the paucity of U.S. stars kill tennis in America? What does the future look like for the Penn Relays, the Dad Vail Regatta?

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Giving 'Em Fitz: The vanishing local-sports landscape