On Monday morning, The Post, in what they termed an “exclusive,” reported that the Yanks and Mets are secretly negotiating with the city to work out deals to sell parts of their old stadiums. The Yankees, through Randy Levine, has since confirmed that they are trying to work out a marketing deal but have no plans to purchase the stadium from the city. Now, The Post can use whatever labels it wants, but this story is not an exclusive. I wrote about it 19 days ago when USA Today reported it as news. No matter the outcome, fans will get the chance to buy bits and pieces of Yankee Stadium. Who wants the pitcher’s rubber?
Fate of the Bat hangs in the balance
Take a look at any architectural rendering of the new Yankee Stadium, and something is clearly missing from the pathways outside the stadium. The Yankee Stadium Bat, that familiar meeting place in the Bronx, visible from the Major Deegan, has not been included in plans for the new Stadium, and no one is quite sure what’s going to happen to it.
Anthony Rieber, in today’s Newsday, tried to get ascertain the fate of the Bat. He did not have much success:
The 120-foot Louisville Slugger outside Gate 4 — actually a boiler stack fitted to look like a bat, complete with a knob at the top, tape at the handle and Babe Ruth’s signature on the barrel — seems to have been overlooked as the Yankees prepare to make the move across the street to a new Yankee Stadium in 2009.
“We do not have knowledge of what will happen to ‘The Bat,'” Yankees spokesman Michael Margolis said.
A spokesman for the city parks and recreation department, which owns and runs Yankee Stadium, referred calls about The Bat to Mayor Bloomberg’s press office.
Said mayoral spokesman Joseph Gallagher: “The city is working with both the Mets and the Yankees on a plan to sell memorabilia from their respective stadiums that will be timed with the end of the 2008 season, and won’t interfere with existing plans to demolish the stadiums.”
It’s highly doubtful that the City and team will find too many buyers for a 120-foot boiler stack.
A few months’ back, a similar quandary arose for Mets fans. The Mets were not planning on transporting the home run apple to CitiField, and fans were not happy to hear that news. In fact, a few of them — a high school classmate of mine included — starting an online movement called Save the Apple. While it’s unclear if they saved the apple from the Shea, CitiField will include its own home run apple.
But what about Yankee Stadium? The Bat doesn’t exactly have any sort of storied history. Everyone and their uncles likes to use as a pre-game meeting spot because it’s rather easy to spot and centrally located. Otherwise, it’s a piece of engineering equipment made to look somewhat like a Babe Ruth bat. The colors don’t even look much like a wooden bat, but it is a part of Yankee Stadium. Fans identify with that part.
Since public support for saving the old Yankee Stadium never really materialized, what about that famous landmark behind home plate? Should we Save the Bat? Or should it serve as a marker of the old Yankee Stadium forever sitting where it now rests?
Photo of The Bat by flickr user wallyg.
Tickets for the rest of us
Richard Sandomir chatted with Yankees COO Lonn Trost yesterday about ticket prices in the new Stadium, a topic near and dear to our hearts recently. For now, it sounds like single-game seats and season ticket holders will have seats that are not as good as they could get now. On the money front, the Yanks say tickets won’t be “significantly more” next year, but if that’s not a loaded phrase, I don’t know what is.
Inside the new Yankee Stadium
That is one spacious entryway.
When last I visited with new Yankee Stadium 24 hours ago, I was bemoaning the prices of the Premium Seating experience. Today, we can leave baseball economics and the free-market effect on ticket prices behind us for a few minutes. Let’s delve deeper into what the stadium will look like upon completion.
Hidden in the not-so-deep recesses of the Premium Seating web experience is a comprehensive set of images that offer up architectural renderings of parts of the inside of the new stadium. For $1.4 billion, the Yankees sure are getting a gem of a stadium even if it turns baseball games into sports experiences, as the marketing folks would have you believe.
Atop this post we see the Great Hall. Yes, it sounds like something out of Harry Potter, but in reality, it is the new entryway to the stadium. That gold-etched sign will front this majestic new hallway. With ample space for large crowds and a high ceiling, this new entryway will certainly lessen the feelings of claustrophobia that come crashing over fans as their enter through the current stadium turnstiles. Staircases lead up the concourses, and banners honoring Yankee Greats hang from the rafters.
Moving to the outfield, we come across Monument Park. From this photo, it’s hard to get a sense of the Yankee shrine. It does appear that the Yanks’ architects anticipate young girls in pink Yankee hats and women in high heels and pant suits at the stadium. Neither of those things belong at a baseball game. It looks like the plaques in the park will no longer be in an open-air part of the stadium; a part of the outfield seating structure appears to hang over the plaque wall.
New Yankee Stadium will have a Yankees Museum. The museum is set for somewhere down the right field line.
Looking out at the field from behind home plate, we see a sea of blue seats ringing the field. Gone is the monolithic feel of the current outfield way (and, apparently, the Bronx as well, according to that photo); restored is the trademark façade from the pre-renovation days. The upper levels do appear somewhat recessed, and the field dimension’s will be identical to those in the current stadium. The view from the Terrace Level behind the plate still looks amazing, and the outfield scoreboard looks fairly huge.
Returning to the bowels of the stadium, we come back to the Experience part of the trip. A sports bar, a martini bar and a steakhouse that will be open year round are just some of the new additions to the Stadium.
Those are just some of the new changes coming to Yankee Stadium when the team moves across the street. For now, these are just renderings of planned additions, but the renderings sure do look luxurious. As the new Stadium nears completion, I’m sure we’ll see more glimpses inside what will become an ostentatious baseball temple in the Bronx. For $1.4 billion, it better be this nice.
See also: Yankees open up new stadium to beat writers.
A sold out Stadium
I just got a call from RAB’s reporter from the street. My mother — stopping by the Yankee Clubhouse Store — called to let me know that the ticket area has a schedule with X’s through the games that are already sold out. She read me off the calendar, and already, ten days before Opening Day, 46 Yankee games are sold out. Every single weekend game is sold out, and no tickets remain for the All Star Game or the final regular season at Yankee Stadium.
The full list of sold out games is after the jump.
A new Stadium, but at what cost?
Premium seats, marked in yellow, will sell for a pretty penny at the New Yankee Stadium.
Earlier this week, the Yankees launched a new Web site detailing seating options at the New Yankee Stadium. Welcome to Yankees Premium, the Web site says. The pages within hold “an exclusive experience for those with discerning tastes who seek the very best that life has to offer.”
What this flashy flash introduction neglects to tell the unsuspecting viewer is that this an exclusive experience for those with very deep pockets as well. But is anyone really surprised?
For the Yankees, this new stadium isn’t about necessity, and it sure wasn’t about history. Say what you will about the renovations in the 1970s, but Yankee Stadium, man, it has some history. It had Gehrig and Ruth and DiMaggio and Mantle and Reggie and Mattingly and the late 1990s. Sure, the concourses were a bit narrow, but if the Red Sox can eke our more seats in Fenway, the Yanks could have found a way to make their current stadium more hospitable for the 4.2 million fans who made the pilgrimage up the Bronx last year. They could have improved the food offerings and renovated the bathrooms.
But that would have left the Yankees right where they are now: with too few options to sell premium seats and too few options to milk money out of the luxury-box cash cows that ring more modern stadiums. They could have made Yankee Stadium nicer, but they couldn’t retrofit it with the proper money-making amenities.
Now, at this point, regular readers may just roll their eyes. “There goes Ben. He’s off on one of his anti-new Yankee Stadium rants,” the thinking goes. But wait. That flashy Web site the Yankees have put together is a treasure trove of information that proves my point, and the ones who are going to lose out when this new stadium opens are you and me, the obsessed fan who isn’t backed by Corporate America.
Last week, when I posted on the recently-spiking top ticket prices at Yankee Stadium, the unspoken conclusion was “watch out.” If you think ticket prices at Yankee Stadium are bad this year, wait until next year when the action moves across the street.
Now, draw your attention to the diagram at the top of this post. Those yellow bands are all a part of the new Yankee Stadium premium seating experience. I am dismayed to note that those yellow bands include my Tier Reserve seats right behind home plate. At the old Stadium, those are the best seats in the house. The seats hang low behind the plate, and the view from foul pole to foul pole is expansive.
At the new Yankee Stadium, those seats are a part of the Terrace Level Outdoor Suite, and prices are going to start at $100 per seat per game. Remember when those used to cost $30 in the late 1990s? Those were the days.
For that $100 price tag, guests of the Yankees will enjoy myriad services during their “seating experience” (the Yanks’ words; not mine). Fans will have access to a climate-controlled indoor lounge with private restrooms, HD TVs, food and a four-sided bar. Need I mention that there are 1300 of those seats? You do the math.
Meanwhile, on the lower levels, the Main Level Outdoor Suite, designated by the middle yellow band above, will occupy 1200 of the choicest seats. This time, guests who shell out at least $350 per seat per game will get access to their own lounge with the same amenities as the Terrace Level folks plus an espresso bar. Also available will be “a generous menu selection, featuring savory ethnic cuisine, traditional ballpark fare and made-to-order brick oven pizza, continues to underscore this world-class experience.”
Finally, we arrive at the field level boxes, now known as the Legends Suite. For a starting price of $500 per seat per game, you can enjoy field-level views from one of 1800 seats — with teak arms — that ring the field and dugouts. And what else do you get for the money? “You will delight in the premium amenities, including cushioned seats with teak arms, in-seat wait service, concierge services, private restrooms and a delectable selection of all-inclusive food and beverages. Exclusive access to the bi-level Legends Suite Club and two Legends Suite Dugout Lounges, helps make the Legends Suite the most coveted ticket in sports,” the Yanks say.
So outside of the new 74-seat, $700-per seat per game Club Suite section, now we know how the Yankees are going to repurpose and remarket some of the best seats in the house. And unsurprisingly, this new Stadium really is all about the money.
I hate to ring bells of doom and gloom, but I fear for the ability to go to games. There’s nothing better than heading up to a Yankee game on a warm summer afternoon to watch the Bombers play. But when the new Stadium opens in little more than a year, it will turn from a game to “an experience.” While these premium seats account for 4300 seats, that still leaves around 48,000 more for the rest of us, but the ticket prices, if these early warning signs are any indication, will be astronomical. The bleacher seats will sell for $20 or more, and the prices for the good seats — those not snatched up by season-ticket holders and the corporate accounts the Yankees will court — will make it next to impossible for anyone on a budget to go to more than a few per season.
The Yankees will get their $1.2 billion stadium. It will be fancy and luxurious. But at what cost to the rest of us?
A time-lapse show of new Yankee Stadium set to terrible music
Quick note on Shelley Duncan: Joe said all that needed to be sad. Let me offer up a few thoughts after seeing, via Sliding Into Home, the video of the slide and brawl. Shelley’s slide, while not terrible, was egregious and intentional. Fired up or not, it’s amateur. Meanwhile, Jonny Gomes, sprinting in from right field, probably deserves the biggest suspension from the brawl. It’s not over between the Yanks and Rays even if it should be.
And on to happier things…
I love watching big sports complexes go up. When I was in college outside of Philadelphia, the drive into the City of Brotherly Love would take me past Lincoln Financial Field and Citizens Bank Park as they were under construction. Each trip up I-95 would show new parts of the stadium reaching ever upward.
Down in DC, where the Nationals are constructing a beautiful new ballpark, the team was kind enough to provide a live camera of the stadium as it goes up. The camera, positioned in the rafters slightly off the third base side of home plate, updates with a new picture every hour and has been continuously recording for years. There’s even a pure time-lapse option that’s really neat. (An aside: Why are the lights on at 1:05 a.m. on a Thursday in March?)
The Yankees, meanwhile, offer up no such fun. We’ve gotten media tours and insider photographs of the Stadium. I’ve taken my camera to the Bronx a few times as well. But in the age of limitless information, the Yankees have been expectedly stingy with shots of the new stadium. Where is our official construction cam? That’s a lot more interested than the Bud Fan of the Game.
Today, WCBS 880 offers us the next best thing: their own sort-of time lapsed view of the construction. I’ve embedded the video after the jump, but it’s not so great. It’s set to terrible and annoying versions of baseball classics, and the photos themselves are rather haphazard. It’s better than nothing, but give us our construction cam!
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