Where have all the rich folks gone? Long time passing....
I just caught a game at the new Yankee Stadium. I was glad I went, but I won’t be back soon. It was a pleasant, but not a transcendent experience, and it was not worth the money.
The new park is nice, especially when compared to junk piles like Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field or Boston’s Fenway Park (the latter easily the most overrated venue in America). But it’s hard to see why Yankee Stadium should have cost $1.5 billion and it’s distressing to contemplate how many better uses that money could have served in the Dante’s Inferno called the Bronx. And, truth be told, the Yankees didn’t need a new park.
What new visitors will notice is the jumbo-sized video screen in centerfield, the wide concourses, and the impressive Great Hall festooned with three-story banners of past Yankee heroes that greets you when you enter the park. The seats are wider, the facades outlining the upper deck are a nice touch, the sightlines are clean, and the vantage point outside of Gate Four conjures images of imperial Rome. Beyond these, however, the new park is a clone of the old House that George Steinbrenner Rebuilt. I was surprised by the lack of design that went into new Yankee Stadium. For over a billion dollars I expected something more akin to baseball’s jewel, Baltimore’s Camden Yard. And they can blow up the damned video screen. It’s just a bunch of noise and distraction. 101-feet long and they can’t find space to put up the balls and strikes?
Most of the dough went into things we mortals will never see: the clubhouses, the training rooms, and above all—the luxury boxes, suites, private clubs, and amenities aimed at the high rollers. Since most of the latter choked on their own greed and perished in the Stock Market collapse, Yankee Stadium has a lot of facilities collecting cobwebs. These include the embarrassingly empty field-level box seats that were supposed to be filled with fat asses shelling out up to $2500 per game. The Yankees should repent this folly and put these seats up for public sale at $100 each. In the old days Joe Sixpack left the bleachers for a once-a-year splurge for a box seat for himself and his kid. As often as not that experience turned wide-eyed kids into lifelong baseball fans. Now Joe would have to sell a kidney (and maybe the kid as well) to get anywhere near those seats. Yankee stadium is crawling with security guards to make sure commoners can’t get near the lower level. They won’t even allow you to enter empty concourse areas to snap a photograph before the friggin’ game.
If you’re not an oil baron, here’s what you’ll shell out at Yankee Stadium. “General Admission” tickets are a myth; these have been bought by consolidators, speculators, and season ticketholders displaced from the old park. Expect to pay double the face value. My upper grandstand ticket cost me $50. If Jeeves isn’t dropping you off in front of your suite, it will cost at least $19 to park your car. Hotdogs are $5.75; a pulled pork sandwich (not bad!) will set you back $10. Bottled water is $4 and everything from cotton candy to popcorn is marked up astronomically. Beer is nine bucks a bottle. (The day I spend $9 for a Budweiser is the day you can donate my brain to science.) I was quite modest and managed to spend just $15 on concessions and, since it was Cap Day I wasn’t tempted by the ubiquitous “official gear” kiosks. Get thee to a Bob’s Store to buy t-shirts, unless you find virtue in shelling out $35 for run-of-the-mill logo apparel. Tolls on the Henry Hudson—and good luck finding it from the horrendous traffic rerouting—will cost another $5.50. Toss in $20 for gas if you’re traveling any distance and another $10 to have some pizza and beer in New Haven on the way home and your day to Yankee Stadium will run you around a hundred bucks a person if you’re being frugal. (Go to baseball’s most expensive venue, Fenway Park, and it will cost about a third more.)
A hundred bucks is a buck more than I pay for a subscription to MLB.com, which allows me to watch every game in the country for the entire year. While the experience of watching games on the Internet—even in high def—isn’t the same as being at the park, the seating, sightlines, beer, and food are way cheaper and better at home. And if that’s what a baseball nut like me has concluded, it gives pause about how much longer MLB can put fannies in the seats. Don’t take me out to the ballgame. I’m sick of subsidizing rich people’s playgrounds.
I just caught a game at the new Yankee Stadium. I was glad I went, but I won’t be back soon. It was a pleasant, but not a transcendent experience, and it was not worth the money.
The new park is nice, especially when compared to junk piles like Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field or Boston’s Fenway Park (the latter easily the most overrated venue in America). But it’s hard to see why Yankee Stadium should have cost $1.5 billion and it’s distressing to contemplate how many better uses that money could have served in the Dante’s Inferno called the Bronx. And, truth be told, the Yankees didn’t need a new park.
What new visitors will notice is the jumbo-sized video screen in centerfield, the wide concourses, and the impressive Great Hall festooned with three-story banners of past Yankee heroes that greets you when you enter the park. The seats are wider, the facades outlining the upper deck are a nice touch, the sightlines are clean, and the vantage point outside of Gate Four conjures images of imperial Rome. Beyond these, however, the new park is a clone of the old House that George Steinbrenner Rebuilt. I was surprised by the lack of design that went into new Yankee Stadium. For over a billion dollars I expected something more akin to baseball’s jewel, Baltimore’s Camden Yard. And they can blow up the damned video screen. It’s just a bunch of noise and distraction. 101-feet long and they can’t find space to put up the balls and strikes?
Most of the dough went into things we mortals will never see: the clubhouses, the training rooms, and above all—the luxury boxes, suites, private clubs, and amenities aimed at the high rollers. Since most of the latter choked on their own greed and perished in the Stock Market collapse, Yankee Stadium has a lot of facilities collecting cobwebs. These include the embarrassingly empty field-level box seats that were supposed to be filled with fat asses shelling out up to $2500 per game. The Yankees should repent this folly and put these seats up for public sale at $100 each. In the old days Joe Sixpack left the bleachers for a once-a-year splurge for a box seat for himself and his kid. As often as not that experience turned wide-eyed kids into lifelong baseball fans. Now Joe would have to sell a kidney (and maybe the kid as well) to get anywhere near those seats. Yankee stadium is crawling with security guards to make sure commoners can’t get near the lower level. They won’t even allow you to enter empty concourse areas to snap a photograph before the friggin’ game.
If you’re not an oil baron, here’s what you’ll shell out at Yankee Stadium. “General Admission” tickets are a myth; these have been bought by consolidators, speculators, and season ticketholders displaced from the old park. Expect to pay double the face value. My upper grandstand ticket cost me $50. If Jeeves isn’t dropping you off in front of your suite, it will cost at least $19 to park your car. Hotdogs are $5.75; a pulled pork sandwich (not bad!) will set you back $10. Bottled water is $4 and everything from cotton candy to popcorn is marked up astronomically. Beer is nine bucks a bottle. (The day I spend $9 for a Budweiser is the day you can donate my brain to science.) I was quite modest and managed to spend just $15 on concessions and, since it was Cap Day I wasn’t tempted by the ubiquitous “official gear” kiosks. Get thee to a Bob’s Store to buy t-shirts, unless you find virtue in shelling out $35 for run-of-the-mill logo apparel. Tolls on the Henry Hudson—and good luck finding it from the horrendous traffic rerouting—will cost another $5.50. Toss in $20 for gas if you’re traveling any distance and another $10 to have some pizza and beer in New Haven on the way home and your day to Yankee Stadium will run you around a hundred bucks a person if you’re being frugal. (Go to baseball’s most expensive venue, Fenway Park, and it will cost about a third more.)
A hundred bucks is a buck more than I pay for a subscription to MLB.com, which allows me to watch every game in the country for the entire year. While the experience of watching games on the Internet—even in high def—isn’t the same as being at the park, the seating, sightlines, beer, and food are way cheaper and better at home. And if that’s what a baseball nut like me has concluded, it gives pause about how much longer MLB can put fannies in the seats. Don’t take me out to the ballgame. I’m sick of subsidizing rich people’s playgrounds.
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