You know that I’m a bigger Yankee fan than you, right? I’m one of those remaining few nostalgic of those early 90s teams managed by Buck Showalter, with an infield of interchangable parts like Randy Velarde, Mike Gallego and Sarina’s idol Pat Kelly. I spent some of my greatest summers listening to John Sterling and Michael Kay on WABC painting the picture of a team on the rise.
The year after high school, I went to Israel. This happened to be 1996, where after only a few short years of patience, the union going on strike and the heartbreaker in Seattle a year before, the Yankees won it all! But I was in Israel. But this blog post isn’t about that, you can read my GroundReport piece I published last fall to hear about that.
This is about the New Yankee Stadium. When I knew this was really happening, I accepted it. It was and still is quite bittersweet. I was at the last game at the old place, as I had a Sunday plan for a bunch of years, which included tickets for Opening Day and Old Timers Day. There were some good times.
However, with the relocation process to the new place, the priority wasn’t to keep the current fans happy. The new stadium was designed with luxury in mind. The old upper deck had around 30,000 seats and the new one has 20,000. Where did those seats go? Downstairs of course.
But it is not that simple. With more seats downstairs, they jacked up the prices, forcing fans with comparable seats in the old stadium to move to the upper deck. This has pushed the incumbent ticket holders out of the way, being assigned inferior plans. My Sunday plan in the old stadium has translated into a WEEKDAY plan in the new place. I’m not alone. I’ve heard horror stories of people with plans in the upper deck moved to the bleachers. That’s just not right.
I’m sure that the Yankees expected by making 10,000 seats that were previously $25 now cost $325, they’d make a lot of money. Except nobody is buying. They are being marketing to the corporate types, the ones that probably already have season tix to every team in the city and use them to entertain clients. The recession is blamed, but I just can’t accept it. The biggest losers? Your biggest fans. The Mets, on the other hand, didn’t do such a power play, and have semi-decent seats available today at Citi Field. But I’m a Yankee fan.
I expect that in the next few years, as the euphoria of being in a new stadium wears off, better seats and plans will be available. But until then, you can find me in Section 421, Row 13 once a week on some random weeknight…
