Maybe I will have a more positive opinion of the new Yankee Stadium when I see it in person, but right now, I think it’s just all too much. And I write this as somebody who wanted a new Stadium.
To me, the way the seventh-inning tradition of Ronan Tynan’s “God Bless America” was “upgraded” yesterday with a cheesy musical backing track seems like a metaphor for the stadium itself. It was superfluous swill being marketed as an upgrade.
I don’t know if it’s the acoustics, or the seating, or the crowd itself, but it sounded so dead at the Stadium. Up until the seventh inning, it was still a close game, but you wouldn’t know it from the crowd.
Not to mention the lack of historical perspective from too many in the crowd. While I did like the Pavano boos, and the “We Want Swisher” chants during the seventh inning, I also agreed with Joel Sherman about this:
And there is one more element to add to the lost ambience, and that is a metastasizing lack of historical perspective now. These days, Boomer Wells and Paul O’Neill get larger applause in pregame introductions than Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra. It is as if Yankees history began in 1996, though the architecture of this place is supposed to transport us to the glory of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
Oh, and how about the fact that it looked like at least 70% of the crowd fled after the bullpen debacle? You’re at the first game ever at the new Stadium, and you leave early? Unreal.
Or how about the West Point cadets involved in the pre-game ceremony being given the honor of sitting in the $5 obstructed view seats in the bleachers. Nice!
The YES broadcast also made me angry, as I noted yesterday. It treated the game as an afterthought, and not the main reason to watch. Heck, they couldn’t even manage to have Yogi Berra’s first pitch airing live. Unacceptable.
I heard Bud Selig on that broadcast talk about how MLB was “sensitive” to the economic conditions in this country. Yankee COO Lonn Trost claimed much the same thing on WFAN before the game. Trost claimed that when you take out the luxury seats/suites from the equation, 90% of Yankee tickets are $100 or less. Earth to Trost – $100 for one ticket at a baseball game isn’t exactly affordable.
And guess what? After all the hype, the Yankees didn’t even really sell out the joint, contrary to what they’re claiming. From the New York Times:
Though Thursday’s paid attendance of 48,271 was roughly 4,000 below the stadium’s capacity, the Yankees still called it a sellout. They said that sponsors’ tickets did not count toward paid attendance and that standing-room tickets were not being sold yet.
Why couldn’t the Yanks have given some of those unsold good seats to those military cadets stuck in the obstructed view seats? Because that would have made too much sense.
What do you think? Leave us a comment!
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
