Shrinking my home away from home - Yankee Stadium

The BBQ Pit
1

I do not begrudge the Yankees a new stadium. I love my second home in section 614 and one of my few retained childhood memories was my first ballgame at the “House That Ruth Built”, prior to its mid-70s renovation (weekday day game, loss to Chicago White Sox, Loge section, great Yankee franks of years gone by).

The Yankees are on pace to exceed 4,000,000 in regular season attendance this year. With 81 home games, that means that the Yankees have an average attendance of approximately 49,400. That means that when even the 20 games out of first place Baltimore Orioles come to town, 52,418 people attend to watch reformed Red Sox Johnny Damon’s bat and Philadelphia import Bobby Abreu’s arm, along with homegrown Robinson Cano lead the Yankees to a late inning, come-from-behind victory. When the Mets or the Red Sox visit, you can guarantee 56,000+ people, up to the 57,478 capacity.

So you’re George Steinbrenner and NYC. You know that the demand for tickets for the big games approaches 50,000 seats per game on average (and that includes day games against hapless teams such as Kansas City or Tampa Bay). You know that mid-week demand for games against contending teams often fills 54,000+ seats (from personal observation), and you might as well be printing money when you issue weekend tickets. You’ve gotten a contract to build a new stadium. What do you do?

Of course! You shrink the stadium to 53,000 seats. Someone must’ve passed Economics 101 and realized that you can charge more for a product when you limit supply. Additionally, their adding more luxury boxes (because only the rich should attend the games), which means that they’ll likely end up with even more revenue per seat. And if your family was the 57,470th person on line to get Red Sox tickets this weekend…tough shit.

Hey George, here’s a novel idea. Rebuild the stadium (it needs it), but add seats and luxury boxes. Put in 60,000 seats. You’ll fill them often enough. The demand for games is there. What the hell were you thinking shrinking my home?

2

I agree whole heartily with your well done pitting.
I’ve been going to my place of Worship, The Cathedral of Baseball, since the about the 8th game of the re-opened Yankee Stadium after seeing my first Yankee games in the Cesspit known as Shea.
I hate the reduced seating idea. If it makes you feel at all better, I have read that built into the plans is the ability to add seats later, back up to the 56,000 range and at least it will be Yankee Stadium and not “Corporate Sponsor Arena”
The new Stadium should actually look more like the original “House that Ruth Built” than the current stadium.
Now the Bad news, most reports are saying that when opened the new Yankee Stadium will only seat 51,000.
From Ballparks by Munsey and Suppes

From today’s Newsday article:
The **51,000-seat stadium ** is expected to be ready for the 2009 season opener, and will feature many of the same amenities boasted by MLB’s newest parks.
Jim BTW: This year I am a part time Bleacher Creature.

3

If you’re ever strolling around toward right field, near loge box section 9, 2 row (directly over the ball/strike scoreboard), pop by and say hello.

Can’t explain the trend

Yankee Stadium Capacity
1937: 71,699
1942: 70,000
1948: 67,000
1980: 57,545

With fewer and fewer ballparks being used as Football Stadium hybrids, I have to assume designers are going for intimate settings. Unless I’m mistaken, the trend in all the new parks cropping up is one of smaller capacity. The day of the soupbowl stadium is coming to an end, thankfully.

4

Intimate? You and your closest 57,000 friends? I don’t begrudge the Yankees a newer stadium, nor do I begrudge Mr. Steinbrenner his 57 ~$500,000 luxury boxes. I’d love better facilities, better vendors, and (hopefully) more legroom in the seats. I just don’t see shrinking capacity. This isn’t Kansas City or Arizona. Meaningless games draw 52,000 people. Find room for 10,000 more seats, and you’ll still be turning away people for crosstown and Red Sox games. The “emptiest” stadium I’ve been to this season was still 47,000+ people on a chilly, wet early May game.

John, sounds like you are a level below me…and on the opposite side of the field. I’m in the second row of the upper deck, to the left field side of home plate.

5

I wanted to bump my thread here with some new info.

Today (Thursday), the Yankees had a day game against the Baltimore Orioles. Attendance: 54,244. Yet there will be less seats.

One thing I noticed is that the lower deck will have more seats than the upper deck, something like 30,000 to 20,000. So fewer but more expensive seats.

6

One reason for less seats is that the seats will be bigger is what I heard and read. I will be nice when Yankees.com gets the more detailed plans on the site. This is suppose to happen at some point from what I heard a few weeks ago.

Jim

7

That’s one way to put it. Another is that the average American ass continues to grow but old stadium seats don’t.

8

I can’t help but suspect safety issues - evacuation routes and so on - will cause a newly-designed stadium to have a smaller capacity than an old stadium on the same ground.

9

But it is not on the same ground, the new stadium is being built on a larger area across the street from the “House that Ruth Built”.
They have chosen to have less seating from what Lon Trost* said.

Jim

  • Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of the New York Yankees
10

I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like to be inside Yankee Stadium. I’ve never been to New York City.

Once in the 1970’s, with a frantic husband driving across the George Washington Bridge following signs that said “New England,” I kept my eyes turned to the left and abandoned my navigation duties. I knew that might be my only chance to see “the house that Ruth built.”

And just for a couple of seconds it was there, filling up my eyes and my memory.

That is one of the very special things that I keep close by. Sometimes during a game I will catch a glimpse of the bridge. Nice.

I know that 1927 was really something. But which year in the 1950’s was the best?

Also, this bit of trivia: Did you know that the first pro football sudden death overtime was also played in Yankee Stadium?

And why are y’all moving? Didn’t you completely remodel just a few years ago?

I really don’t think the stadium should be smaller either. Someone is not thinking ahead. Who makes these decisions?

11

I knew that, though I consider that game to be improperly named. Its name should rightfully be applied to the Bills-Giants Superbowl.

I try not to think about the new Yankee stadium, as it fills me with far too much anger. I get pissed at the fucking yokels running New Jersey. And then I get even more pissed at the Jets.

Long before the Yankees starting planning the new stadium, the Giants drew up plans for a new Giants Stadium, and offered to foot the entire bill with private funds. No taxpayer expense.

But no, New Jersey has to piss and moan ad nauseum, and the Jets have to shoehorn themselves into the deal and then bitch about every little thing. Why couldn’t New Jersey just let the Giants build the stadium they wanted to pay for in the first place? It would be much further along, and it would have still been called Giants Stadium. But no, the state and the fucking Jets had to go and fuck everything up.

And now the Yankees have already broken ground on a plan they started later and that involves hundreds of millions in taxpayer money. The whole thing makes me want to puke.

12

Thirty years ago, in the pre-luxury-box days. Even considering the stadium to be only that old, it’s still one of the oldest in MLB now.

13

For a new ballpark, that’s large. The movement has been towards “cozy” ballparks. One assumes Steinbrenner has done the math and is doing what’s most profitable. After all, the Yankees are still making and spending less than the rest of the competition combined, so he has to do what he can to keep up.

14

The Yankees are also putting up approx. $800 million of their own money to build it, so I can only assume they have put serious thought into the seating plan. Say what you will about Steinbrenner, he’s still one savvy businessman.

15

Its not like he’s going broke on his ‘YES Network’ deal, which is required to be part of every COMCAST cable package, no matter how basic. Maybe he wants more people to stay home so they can watch the comercials…?

16

In theory, the Yankees are “losing” money on concessions, if by losing money one means not maximizing the amount of green vaccuumed out of fans pockets. There will be more and theoretically better concessions in the new stadium.

I sure hope the seats are bigger. While no one will mistake me for thin, I still easily fit in the seats side-to-side. The lack of legroom, however, is a killer. It just destroys my already screwed-up knees. Only positive is that it gives me a reason to stand and scout out the Beck’s vendor every half inning.

Maybe I should sell my house and buy a luxury box.

17

Additionally the 74-75 rebuild was only partial. Much of the Stadiums structure is still very old steal. Some is from the 20’s and some from the 30’s.

**Zoe: **The Best Yankees 50’s team is hard to say. The only time they top 100 they did not go to the World Series. The World Series winners were all teams that won in the 90 games range. !939 & 1961 were truly all-time great teams. The Greatness of the 50’s Yanks was in winning 5 straight from 1949 to 1953.

I would say 1951 was the most special team of the 50’s as Joe D, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra & Phil 'Scooter" Rizzuto were all on the Squad with Casey Stengel at the Helm and Bob Sheppard’s first year as “The Voice of the Stadium”. The most special moment was without question the Don Larsen Perfect game in the World Series in 1956.

Jim

18

It galls me that public money is being spent, and it’s generally to make Yankee and Shea Stadiums more profitable and exclusive. I think it’s a pretty solid fact that it’s not in the public interest at all to spend money on these stadiums. I’m a Mets fan and I think both teams are equally guilty here.

This from yesterday’s article in the Times:

“The mayor said the stadium would help revitalize the long-neglected South Bronx and create 6,500 construction jobs over the next four years, as well as 1,000 permanent jobs.”

This is pants, Mike. The new stadium is going to “help” revitalize the Bronx even when the amazing Yankee attendance for the last 30-odd years hasn’t? How? Attendance won’t go up, fewer people who live there will be able to go to games, and outside people will be just as terrified of the South Bronx as ever. What percentage of those 6500 construction jobs are coming from the Bronx? Are those 1000 “permanent” jobs, full-time, year-round? Is it 1000 more than work there now?

I can’t find the article where I read this, but is it still in the plan that the field at the current stadium will still be a baseball field in the new park? That would be a nice touch, and ought to appease the people calling New York sports radio stations who are reacting like they’re building a Chinese-owned Confederate flag factory in the middle of the Gettysburg battlefield.

The last time I went to Yankee Stadium I took the train, got there early, ate dinner at a Dominican place in the neighborhood. Get more people to do that and you’re talking a tiny bit of revitalization. I don’t see it happening.

“Randy L. Levine, the president of the Yankees and a former deputy mayor, said ‘it will cater to the needs of our fans and it will be affordable for all.” The stadium will have a standing-room area to accommodate 1,000 people.’”

There you go, Jim … better get knee surgery, you’re going to be standing up!

I know people are always complaining about how Chez Shea is a cesspool, falling apart around their ears … frankly, I don’t see it. Yes, it’s old, it’s ugly, it’s hard to attach any sentimental value to it all, if the new Mets stadium (I’m holding out for a naming rights coup and it’s Italian Ice King of Corona Park in 2009) didn’t have the f’ing apple in the top hat and f’ing neon guy outside it I would not shed a tear – but once a game has started I really honestly don’t think it’s that much different for me than the other MLB stadiums I’ve been to (which are Yankee Stadium, Candlestick and Anonymous Phone Company Park in SF, Great American, Dodgers, Angels (whatever they’re calling it now), the Vet and Anonymous Bank Park in Philadelphia … and I’m going to RFK in September, which is now third- or fourth-oldest, I think, depending on how you count Yankee Stadium). Granted, a lot of these are old stadiums, and I go to food vendors maybe once and I hardly ever have to go the bathroom during a ballgame. I’m just sitting in my seat watching the field. Maybe I’m weird.

19

**Ichbin Dubist **, I hate the smaller capacity of the new stadium, but I thought the $200 million does have a lot earmarked for infrastructure. The current Macoombs Dam Bridge overhaul and I thought another Rail spur connecting a major line from the North to Yankee Stadium that would help daily commutes in general. I think most of the $200 million is probably go to be fairly well spent by NYC standards and is not corporate welfare.

Standing Room Only, Yep I am going to less games in the new stadium. I find the Bleachers just barely acceptable for comfort for a game and I will only be getting my $5 nosebleed deals anymore if I guess correctly. I will not go back to a $1600 season ticket package and I know I will not do Standing Room Only.
Fans like me who have travel costs in addition to stadium costs will get push out by the new seating arrangements.

As far as Yankee Stadium helping the area, I have been coming to the Stadium since shortly after the reopening in 1976.
The Area was scary, got scarier, got frightening and then started really improving under Rudy G and is nice for the first time in my life the last few years.
A little hole in the wall Spanish Pizza place & bar that I use to go to as it was quiet and cheap is now over crowded at 5pm on a weeknight. All the Restaurants and bars are over crowded. I loved going to the Court Diner, I cannot get in anymore. Stan’s, Fuhgetaaboutit!! The area is revitalizing in many ways already.

Jim

20

Here’s a set of maps of before and after the planned construction. It’s from March 2006 so may have changed more recently…

I used to work up the hill from the Stadium in the Highbridge neighborhood. Our perception was that most of the shenanigans going on around the stadium were perpetrated by people going to the games, not the residents.