Roger Waters to bring The Wall to Citizens Bank Park in July

Would Ryan Howard be able to hit it over this Wall? Pink Floyd mastermind Roger Waters is bringing The Wall, his most impressive musical-theatrical production based on the 1979 double LP that's one of the biggest selling albums of all time, back to Philadelphia. The bass playing rock auteur will build up a 40 X 500 foot wall at Citizens Bank Park on July 14, in what's planned as the last stop of a U.S. tour that begins May 1 in Houston, Texas. Tickets go on sale this Monday at 10 a.m. at LiveNation.com and ComcastTix.com.

"This will be be the greatest musical stage production ever to take place at Citizens Bank Park," Phillies public affairs director Scott Palmer announced on Tuesday afternoon, standing at a podium set up at home plate in the first action to take place in the local baseball team's home stadium since they lost to the eventual world champion St. Louis Cardinals on Oct. 7.

As interview and video clips of the 68 year old Waters and The Wall played behind him - with Waters explaining how he wrote "Comfortably Numb" after performing at The Spectrum in the 1970s while over-medicated for a severe stomach ache -  Palmer watched as the Phillie Phanatic then rode in from the bullpen and crashed through a cardboard Wall beneath a beautiful blue sky. When he got off his Phanaticized golf cart to wave his Wall flag, however, it came off its pole.

The Phanatic was joined by local Live Nation president Geoff Gordon, who touted the production, which presumably will feature a flying pig, a burning airplane and a powerful antiwar message, by saying "they say that if you haven't seen this show, you haven't lived yet."

Of course, if you're a Pink Floyd fan, there's an excellent chance that you have already seen this show: He toured all the world with The Wall in 2009 and 2010, icluding three shows at the then Wachovia Center, across the street from Citizens Bank Park, in November 2010.

However, he's never taken The Wall - which must be dutifully built up, as a metaphorical symbol for the fortress that poor Roger built around his heart, before it's torn down at the end of the operatic tour de force - on a trek to venues of this size before. (In a mixture of arena and stadium dates, Waters will also be stopping at AT&T Park in San Francisco and Wrigley Field in Chicago.)

As to the relevance of the music over 30 years after it was first recorded, Water told me in an interview in 2010 that what  The Wall is really about is "the supremely relevant question" of whether the vast technological changes that have taken place over the last three decades will be used to divide people or bring them together.

"We have a better chance to communicate with ourselves in a way where we can fend off the malign influence of government, big business and greed," he says. "I really believe we have a better chance as a people because we can Twitter and Google and e-mail everything to each other."

Of all his mega-selling efforts with Pink Floyd, Waters said in 2010, The Wall is the one he's most proud of.

"I love 'Dark Side of the Moon.' 'Wish You Were Here.' I love 'Animals.' We did some great, great work together, and I'm proud of it all.

"But to me, 'The Wall' stands out, because it has more to tell us now that's important than the others. ...

"It tells us that we must not allow our political and economic masters, what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex, that we must not allow our leaders to persuade us that we need to kill others in order for us to protect ourselves.

"That's what I'm saying in 'The Wall.' You must not listen to that voice. You must listen to another voice, and it's the voice that wants to take down these walls, lean across these barriers, and look into each other's eyes and clasp each other's hands, and say, 'No.' "

Previously: Let There Be Math Rock: Battles at TLA Follow In the Mix on Twitter here