PHILADELPHIA — It had been six days since Dillon Minacci waited at school for his parents to finally pick him up. National Park rangers told the Minaccis to stay inside their Queen Village home — which sits on the grounds of the Gloria Dei Old Swedes Episcopal Church — as a precaution following the terrorist attacks that morning in New York.

Could the old church where Betsy Ross was once married be next? So Dillon was one of the last kids to leave St. Mary School in the shadow of Independence Hall. No one knew what to think that day, Paula Minacci said of Sept. 11, 2001. And everyone seemed to struggle to find normalcy in the days that followed.

Finally, the Phillies were back at Veterans Stadium. Their game against the Braves on Sept. 17 was the first major league game after the season was paused. Jim Minacci told his son they were going. Then he went to the church basement — where he still works with his wife as the sextons — and grabbed a big American flag on a wooden pole.

“It was embarrassing, right?” said Dillon, who was then in the fourth grade and just old enough to roll his eyes at his parents. “I was like, ‘What are you doing? Why are you bringing a flag to the park? What are we doing?’”

Paula Minacci dropped them off at the stadium and then waited to make sure they’d let them in with the big flag. The Vet was filled that night with American flags. People waved them in the stands and the players had them stitched on their uniforms. Phillies manager Larry Bowa cried during the anthem and Harry Kalas opened the telecast with an emotional monologue about how sports can be a diversion and a unifier.

No one questioned Minacci’s flag.

He sat with the pole for a few innings in the upper deck before telling his son he wanted to take a lap around the stadium, which had a rung in front of the seating bowl. His son was embarrassed, but he told his dad he’d come with him. And then the cheers started. The fans chanted U-S-A and shouted for Minacci as he marched around a half-filled stadium with the flag over his shoulder like a patriot. Embarrassed? Not anymore, his son said.

“For us, we were like, ‘Hell yeah. This is awesome,’” Dillon, 35, said. “We got back to our seats and he said, ‘We’re going again.’ OK. I didn’t expect this to be happening. Let’s go.”

The Minaccis attended every game the rest of the season as the late-30s dad became Flag Man, a symbol of patriotism when everyone seemed to rally around the flag. They started their night marching around the upper deck before heading to the lower bowl where the chants were just as loud.

A cast of kids would leave their seats every night to walk behind Flag Man, whom Pat Burrell called “the pied piper” when Minacci was featured in the team’s highlight video.

Phillies general manager Ed Wade presented Flag Man with a custom jersey and a security guard started letting the Minaccis in without tickets. Flag Man’s hands were so sore from carrying the wooden pole that he started to wear fingerless gloves. He loved it.

The Vet already had the Wolf Pack and other fan groups that injected character to a concrete goliath. Flag Man fit right in. Minacci became part of the scene.

All these years later, the 64-year-old Minacci is still not sure why he brought the flag that first night. He remembers watching the news and seeing people at Ground Zero, volunteering to dig through the rubble of the World Trade Center. Minacci wanted to be in Manhattan but had two jobs in Philly and a son. So he grabbed his flag and went to the game.

“I probably brought the flag so it could represent all those people doing all that good work,” he said. “People were doing extraordinary things against the backdrop of this terrible disaster that in our lifetime was unprecedented. I felt a real sense of wanting to go to the game to enjoy myself and be free of all the struggle and strife but also be part of a community and be with my son in a moment that meant something.”

“It was just being present and showing support for these people who were doing extraordinary things.”

Flag Man grew up near Binghamton, N.Y., in a small town he said had more cows than people. His father Paul was a Yankees fan but he often took his family in the early 1970s to Philly — where he graduated from Penn — to see games at the Vet when tickets were easy to get.

Minacci chased down players for autographs and can still remember how it felt to sit in the stands with his dad. He moved to Philly in the 1980s and soon found himself sitting in the same seats with his son.

“I just always loved baseball and doing it with my dad just like he did it with his dad,” Dillon said. “Baseball is so unique in that you don’t really have to pay attention to it. That’s kind of the beauty of it. It’s an atmosphere that’s open to whatever you make it. Other sports, you’re kind of locked in on the time limit or the net you have to hit it into. Baseball is very much, ‘Are you paying attention or not? Can I take advantage of that?’ For a father and son, you get to spend time whether you’re talking or not.”

The Vet was their place before 9/11 so it was where the Minaccis needed to be after that dark Tuesday. The Minaccis — just like the rest of the 27,910 fans — longed for an escape. They didn’t know their night would be the dawn of Flag Man.

“We got home and he said, ‘We have to go again tomorrow,’” Dillon said. “I was like, ‘I’ll go to baseball every night of the week if that’s what this is.’ I was totally in. If you get a couple drinks in me, then I pull down the old video yearbook. Damn, that was cool. I can’t believe I was a part of that and my dad had the idea to do that.”

He took a trip with his parents last month to a minor-league game in upstate New York and told his dad how impactful those nights at the Vet were. His parents were always “locally minded,” Dillon said, as their work at Old Swedes made them a fabric of the neighborhood. Flag Man was an extension of that. His dad always seemed to bring people together. Everyone just got to see it this time.

“I know my son is a better person today for it. His awareness of being a part of a community,” Minacci said. “As a father, as a human being, that’s the reward.”

Dillon now lives in Austin, Texas, and will often ask another Philly transplant if they remember Flag Man. Of course, they remember that guy who used to carry a flag around the Vet. That’s my dad, the proud son tells them. No way, he hears. Flag Man is a memory.

“There’s the baseball game, the baseball team, the baseball staff, and then the crowd who fills the stadium,” Minacci said. “We got to be a part of that community.”

Minacci brought his flag back to the Vet in 2002 and 2003 as he continued to march before the Vet closed. Citizens Bank Park opened in April 2004 and Minacci was there with his flag for the first game. The guy at the gate apologized. Minacci couldn’t bring the long wooden pole into the new park. Flag Man was finished.

“I think what bummed him out the most was him not being able to end it in a way that he wanted to,” Dillon said. “He wanted the chance to say ‘Thank you.’ It really meant a lot to him and it meant a lot to me. We met a lot of people at the ballpark and became a part of the Phillies community. So it goes.”

Minacci stood outside the stadium that day before deciding to go home. It was over. He’s another fan now when he goes to the ballpark except that he still wears his Flag Man jersey — with No. 47 as a nod to Larry Andersen — when he sits in the seats. Kids who used to trail him at the Vet will stop him and tell him about those days. Now those kids have kids of their own. Minacci helped people come together that September. It was a time and place he’ll never forget.

“It was a unifying visual,” Minacci said. “Something everyone could agree to. Back then, it was an agreeable moment. It would be hard to find that agreeable moment today. We’re all so segmented. It’s awful. It’s really hard.”

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