Shocker! We ended up with $200 in Mets tickets for free! (And we can print them at home if we want to!)

Remember how Squawker Jon and I waited in the cold for two hours on Presidents' Day to get free Mets tickets? And how I almost froze my tuchis off, the day after running a 10-mile race in single-degree weather and getting hypothermia? Anyhow, you may remember that the Mets ended up giving us a better deal on free tickets than we expected. And today was the first day we could redeem our free ticket vouchers.

We had a choice of field-level box seats in the outfield area for most Monday to Thursday Mets games from April through June. So Jon and I chose two games: Tuesday, May 17, Mets vs. Nationals (Daniel Murphy's first game back at Citi Field!) and Thursday, June 30, Mets vs. Cubs (only time Cubs come to town this year.) The Nationals tix are in Section 130 and retail for $37 each. The Cubs tix are in Section 131 and retail for $63 each. So, yes, we ended up with $200 in tickets for waiting in the cold that day. Not too shabby!

Anyhow, there is something else I noticed about the Mets' ticket policies. You can either print the tickets at home, or add them to Apple Wallet so you can show them on your mobile phone! Imagine that! Also, we don't have to worry that we'll get kicked out of our field-level seats, or that somebody will wonder if we really belong there. Amazing.

Funny that the Mets don't seem to be worried about that massive ticket fraud problem that the Yankees are so concerned about. Or, maybe it's that there is no problem at all in the first place! Gee, ya think?

Shocker! Yankees new ticket policy causes a disaster for Stadium soccer game

I was looking at SportsSpyder.com, one of my go-to sites (if you want to see the latest articles on whatever team you follow, go there!) to see the latest on the Yankees. And I just saw this article from Deadspin, about the repercussions of the Yankees' new ticket policy.

The New York City Football Club (NYCFC), who plays at Yankee Stadium, decided to change their ticket policy two days ago, before today's season opener, to ban print-at-home tickets. This, after they had told fans previously that this would be a Yankee-only policy. My guess is that Lonn Trost and Randy Levine pressured them to do so and they had to listen, given that the Yankees are part-owners of the team.

And guess what? Hilarity did not ensue! Instead, a disaster ensued. It was a hot mess.

Thanks to member [Albany] for the pic. 8 minutes out! pic.twitter.com/wqaKJ9UmQ2

— NYCFC Forums (@NYCFCForums) March 13, 2016

@StraightRedPod @NYCFC machines that scan tickets stopped working and they're not letting anybody into the stadium pic.twitter.com/VppM31IW8x

— James Coker (@JamesWCoker) March 13, 2016

Yankee Stadium doesn't care about its customers, the ticket-holders. overtly disrespects them. @Yankees @NYCFC pic.twitter.com/pQOCmT0Jud

— Daniel Roberts (@readDanwrite) March 13, 2016

Roberts is a writer for Yahoo! Finance. He said in another tweet that it took him 49 minutes to get into the ballpark after getting on the security line. He and others also said that the game had started, with much of the crowd still outside. Yikes!

I went to an NYCFC game last summer and had a great time. But if I were on a line like that, and missed some of the game, it wouldn't exactly make me want to come back.

I wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come when the Yankees' season starts. One thing they have not thought out is what it's going to be like when many tens of thousands of people all try to use the Internet on their phones at the same time to pull up their tickets. Last week, I was at Staten Island's St. Patrick's Day Parade, and my phone's Internet was extremely slow. And this was only with a few thousand people, if that. Imagine what it will be like with many more folks.

Things are not going to end well for the Yankees, if this becomes the scene at every game! Good grief.

Raccoon takes over Yankees' spring training

Wonder if he bought his tickets on StubHub! Did you see that a raccoon invaded Steinbrenner Field the other day? He got rousted, fell 40 feet, is still alive, and on the loose! It reminded me of Lonn Trost's infamous comments on Yankee tickets:

"The problem below market at a certain point is that if you buy a ticket in a very premium location and pay a substantial amount of money. It’s not that we don’t want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for their ticket and [another] fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it frustrates the purchaser of the full amount." Trost said.

"And quite frankly,” he said, “the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base."

Check out these pictures of Rocky Raccoon going wild. Now, the obvious joke is that the raccoon is someone who has never sat in a premium location. But I'm going to zig instead of zagging, and make the joke that the raccoon is simply trying to protect his season ticket investment from the riff-raff. Ha!

Message to Randy Levine and Lonn Trost: When you're in a hole, quit digging!

I really was going to write today about something else in Yankeeland besides the team's ticket debacle. Honest. But as long as team president Randy Levine and COO Lonn Trost keep on saying and doing dopey things about it, I've got to keep Squawking about it!

The gruesome twosome have said even more ridiculous things in the last two days to extend this story into even more news cycles. This, at the very same time the team is attempting to sell individual tickets for the 2016 season. Unbelievable.

I woke up this morning to see that Levine had run his mouth about Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. because Diaz is taking the fans' -- and StubHub's -- side in this ticket issue. Diaz's spokesman, John Desio, told the New York Daily News:

“The borough president is a lifelong Yankee fan. The borough president’s favorite player was Graig Nettles. He lives and dies by the Yankees as do many people in the borough, the city and the world. This new policy on tickets combined with their COO’s elitist comments are not very fan friendly for the borough president or anyone else who loves the Yankees.” 

So how did Levine respond? In a mature, adult fashion befitting his reputation. By which I mean, he lashed out like a frat boy with anger management issues, the way he usually does. (How is this guy in a position of authority, anyway? I wouldn't trust him to run the fry station at McDonald's without spilling grease on himself when flying off the handle!)

Levine told ESPN's Darren Rovell, who first reported on Diaz' stance:

“It doesn’t surprise me given that we’ve stopped his endless funding requests. It does surprise me because the only time he showed up to Yankee Stadium was when he was on official business when he was comped. I guess there are no greater problems in the Bronx, that he needs to spend time on, than ticketing.” 

How is this comment possibly productive? It doesn't even make any sense. What, exactly, would be the "endless funding requests" a Bronx borough president would ask the Yankees for? Wouldn't it be the other way around?

And you can't complain that Diaz rarely shows up at Yankee games, and then whine that "I guess there are no greater problems in the Bronx, that he needs to spend time on, than ticketing." Well, most of us would think that enabling his constituents in the poorest borough in the city to get decently priced tickets is kind of important.

UPDATE: Shortly after writing this Squawk, I received an email from Diaz's office containing a copy of a letter the borough president sent to Levine, criticizing the policy. It's a pretty strongly worded missive! Read it here. 

That isn't the only time in recent days that Levine has flapped his gums. He and Trost recently talked to Bloomberg View sports columnist -- and Yankee fan -- Kavitha A. Davidson about the ticket policy. She writes about a less-discussed aspect of using mobile tickets. Fans will have to sign up at Ticketmaster, give the company personal information, and download an app in order to use the Yankees' mobile ticket feature. (I wrote about this last week, but she went to much greater detail on the new system and tried it out herself. "It seems there are still a few bugs to work out," she wrote.)

Anyhow, both Levine and Trost dismissed any concerns over the new policy. Levine insisted to the writer that third-party ticket brokers and StubHub are, Davidson writes, as "the source of much of the backlash against the new mobile system." Um, no, dude. Your team's fans are the main source of the backlash. Remember them?

In addition, according to the article, "Levine said Trost's comments were taken out of context and stressed that the Yankees' position is 'if you buy a legitimate ticket you're welcome to sit at Yankee Stadium,' whether or not you paid full price." Well, isn't that nice of them! And at any rate, we didn't take Trost's comments out of context. We took them in context. That's the problem!

Trost made let yet another elitist remark in insisting: "In today's world of millennials, I can't imagine anyone who's not smartphone savvy who wants to come to the ballpark," he said. "But when they do, they can get a hard-stock ticket." Oy. He needs to get out more.

Remember how Trost talked about Yankee fan ticket buyers who spent "a buck and a half" for premium tickets? I wrote that there was no way people were paying $1.50 a ticket for the fancy seats. But I missed an even more elitist remark that Trost was making with that. I have a friend who is a ticket broker. And he said that "a buck and a half" is a term in the business meaning $150. So Trost is looking down at fans who "only" spend $150 per Yankee ticket. For the rest of us, that sort of money for a three-hour regular season game is a splurge for a milestone birthday or something. In Trost's world, these people are the riff raff!

My friend Jason Keidel, who writes about sports for CBS New York, interviewed me this week about how a decision by the Yankees on February 15 to ban print-at-home tickets has morphed into a PR disaster for the team that is like the Energizer Bunny. It just keeps on going, and going, and going.

I talked about my part in that -- Squawking the next day about how the decision was about smashing StubHub and taking away fans' ability to buy tickets on the secondary market. Then I was interviewed for the New York Post the following day, and showed how Yankee fans were unhappy about this, at the very same time the team's spokesperson claimed that fans were thrilled over it. The very next morning, Yankees COO Lonn Trost popped up on WFAN to defend the policy, and blurted out his elitist opinion about Yankee ticket buyers.

This story has gone about as disastrously for the Yankees as anybody with a brain and common sense could have predicted. It's been raging for 10 days now, and shows no sign of abating. Are there any grownups in Yankeeland who will step in and stop this? Where is Hal Steinbrenner? What could possibly be more important for him to be doing than stopping this PR disaster? Good grief.

Lisa interviewed for CBS New York piece on Yankee ticket policy

CBS New York columnist Jason Keidel has weighed in on the fallout from the Yankees' move to ban print-at-home tickets and Lonn Trost's preferences for the type of fan to sit in the often-empty fancy seats. He interviewed Lisa for his piece New Ticket Policy Widens Divide Between Yankees, Everyday Fans and she is quoted throughout on topics ranging from Trost to admitting that the Mets now have the "better team" than the Yankees!

Yankee press office tells players to be more like Russell Wilson than Cam Newton. But what about Yankee brass?

Isn't it ironic? (Cue Alanis Morrissette song!) The Yankees' PR/media team recently held their annual training sessions advising players how to act in front of the press. In the very same week that the biggest story in Yankeeland is how team COO Lonn Trost made elitist remarks that alienated most of the fan base, and then team president Randy Levine insulted fans' intelligence with his comments about StubHub. Seems like the execs need that training more than the players! Not to mention the fact that this story is still percolating among Yankee fans this week, while nobody from the front office has stepped in to clarify the remarks or apologize for Trost. Talk about bad PR!

Anyhow, Ryan Hatch of NJ.com got the inside scoop on the players' training from media relations director Jason Zillo. Yankees saw videos featuring clips featuring ESPN's Britt McHenry's infamous argument trashing a tow truck employee, as well as Lawrence Taylor's media meltdown back in the day. Derek Jeter pops up on the video to advise the ballplayers that everything in their lives is fair game these days. And A-Rod (!) is actually cited as a positive example of how to handle the press, when he deflected talk of his home run numbers.

The players saw clips of Cam Newton's and Russell Wilson's respective post-Super Bowl press conferences, with the idea that Newton's behavior was bad, and Wilson's was good. But I kind of agree with Big League Stew's Mike Oz, and his take on this:

Cam's presser you know well by now: He grumbled and sulked, giving abrupt answers before walking out. It's almost like he felt emotion after losing the big game of his life. Imagine that....And Wilson's presser from a year earlier was pretty much the opposite....

It was textbook, so the Yankees are right wanting their players to be like Wilson — if you want players to say the predictable thing and not show a lot of emotion. And, let's be real about what the Newton/Wilson dichotomy is really implying these days: We want you to be safe and dull, not polarizing, not making yourself an enemy of Middle America. 

He then writes about how it applies to the Yankees:

They have one player, C.C. Sabathia, who is coming back this season after admitting he had a problem with alcohol and seeking help. He has a story that's worth telling, emotion and all. They have another player, Alex Rodriguez, whose image is as far from clean-cut as possible and has been criticized most of his career for being too robotic. Considering, his against-the-odds comeback from a year ago, he has a reason to finally open up. Is it the worst thing to let them and their teammates be real people with real emotions? 

You're right. Considering this is baseball, where you can't celebrate a home run for more than a split second or risk breaking the unwritten rules, the answer is probably, "Yes. We don't want real emotions. Just say the boring stuff that everyone wants you to say."

Oz then brings up Lonn Trost and suggests, like I just did, that he is the one who needs the media training.

I get the Yankees' point on the media training. I do. But I also get Oz's point. There's something to be said for genuine emotion. While Newton should have stayed longer at the presser so all the reporters could have gotten their questions in (they're funny that way), I cannot fault him for looking as devastated as he did. Isn't that what you want as a fan? For your team's players to care? To be as upset as you are over losing the big game?

You also want your team's front office to care. Not just about the team winning and losing. But about the fans. And Trost's and Levine's remarks have emphasized an "us vs. them" mentality instead of a "we're all Yankee fans together" attitude. I have seen so many fans online over the past few days wonder why they should even bother going to games at all any more, given the contempt the front office has for them.

It's now been five days since Trost's elitist remark. Still no apology, or statement from the team, or olive branch to the fans. Meanwhile, individual tickets have gone on sale. Way to sell the brand, Yanks!

Shocker: Randy Levine reveals the Yankee Ticket Exchange is a huge failure

Would you buy Yankee tickets
from this man?

Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have interviews this weekend with New York Yankees president Randy Levine. He's doing damage control for Lonn Trost's elitist comments when the COO tried to do damage control over the team's ticket kerfuffle. This is like Yasiel Puig advising Jonathan Papelbon how to be a good teammate. Like David Ortiz telling Jose Bautista to tone down his home run celebrations. You catch my drift. 

When are the Yankees going to learn the first rule of holes? When you're in a hole, QUIT DIGGING!

Instead, Levine is out there, shovel in hand, still trying to justify the Yankees' new policy as protecting the fans against fraud. But, just as Trost's damage control went awry, so did Levine's, as he inadvertently confirmed the real reasons for the new policy -- that the team doesn't believe in the free market when it comes to showing the true value of tickets. And that the Yankees Ticket Exchange is a big fat flop.

He told Billy Witz of the Times: “We strongly believe that we have the right to maintain control over our inventory as long as the market provides ample opportunity to have choice in other ways.”

Levine told Jared Diamond of the Journal: “This is our product and our inventory. We have the ultimate right to protect the value of our inventory as long as it’s done in the free-market society.” 

He also admitted to the Journal that only fewer than 10% of the tickets sold on the resale market go through the Yankees Ticket Exchange. And the Journal's story also revealed that, according to StubHub, 40% of their Yankee ticket sales occur in the 72 hours before the event. Which this new ticket policy would not-so-coincidentally negatively affect.

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!

Levine is confirming what Yankee fans like myself have been saying all week. This is all about increasing the resale value of Yankees tickets, and nothing about protecting fans from alleged "fraud."

Like all too many people in Yankeeland, Levine is living in the past. He wants a monopoly on ticket sales, at the very same time he's claiming he's all about the free market. Child, please.

Fans understand economics better than Levine does. The tickets are overpriced, and the free market, as evidenced by the secondary market, is showing that. The proof is in the pudding. The one secondary ticket venue with a price floor is the Yankees Ticket Exchange. And even though they are the easiest for season ticket holders to use, with integration with the team's ticket system, and even though they are integrated into Yankees.com, the exchange, by Levine's own admission, has only captured under 10% of the secondary market. That is an amazingly bad number.

This is why Levine and Trost are pushing this ban on print-at-home tickets and trying to stop fans from using StubHub for these last-second ticket sales. Because three years ago, they sold team owner Hal Steinbrenner on the idea that StubHub needed to be smashed. And they had the Yankees spend the money on this rival ticket exchange, figuring fans were so stupid, they would go to it because it was the official one. 

Yet it is a colossal failure. So now, the Yankees are trying to smash StubHub in another way -- by preventing their own fans from getting good deals on tickets.  They love the free market when it comes to corporations spending big bucks for boxes, but not so much when it shows that their ticket prices are too high.

That's not all that Levine said about the ticket brouhaha. From the Times:

After Lonn Trost, the Yankees’ chief operating officer, was lambasted as elitist for suggesting in a Thursday radio interview that some fans do not belong in premium seats, the team president, Randy Levine, in an interview Saturday, said StubHub had stoked the controversy, accusing it of putting out a narrative “that’s completely fraudulent and completely false.” 

1. What did StubHub have to do with Trost insulting the Yankee fan base? (Incidentally, it's been 72 hours and counting, and the Yankees still haven't apologized for what Trost said. Shows how much the front office cares about the fans.)

2. What part of the narrative, exactly, of what the Yankees are doing by banning print-at-home tickets is “completely fraudulent and completely false”?  That the Yankees has been on a vendetta against StubHub for the last three years? That the Yankees sued to force StubHub to move their Last-Minute Ticket Center from 68 East 161st Street, across the street from the Stadium, to the Bronx Terminal Market at 651 River Avenue and 151st Street? That despite the narrative that Lonn Trost pushed, that StubHub is not the entity holding up them being able to access mobile tickets -- the Yankees are? (And Levine even admits that the Yankees are holding this up, but still blames StubHub for it.)

Individual Yankee ticket sales for 2016 start tomorrow. But the team's brass has spent the last week doing the worst PR you could imagine for selling their own product. Good grief.

What can we learn from Liverpool soccer fans' protest of ticket prices?

Yankee fans and Red Sox fans have more in common than we want to admit -- especially with The Rivalry being so snoozeworthy these days. The latest example of this is something my Boston friend Tyler has been griping about. Tyler, who mashes for Monstah Mash, wrote about the recent uprising with Liverpool Football (Soccer) Club fans, and how team owner John Henry, who also owns the Red Sox, had to back down and apologize to that fan base.

Here's the story. The team announced that they were raising the best ticket prices to 77 pounds (approximately $112) for next year. (Gee, I think both Boston and New York fans would be jumping for joy if that were our top ticket prices!) Liverpool tried to spin the price increase as only affecting some tickets but Liverpool fans were outraged. So the fans planned an in-game protest. At least 10,000 fans walked out in the 77th minute of a game, when their team was leading, 2-0. Their team, apparently flummoxed by the fans leaving, ended up giving up two goals. That got the powers that be's attention.

All it took was this one walkout for John Henry to cry uncle, apologize to Liverpool's fans, and roll back the price increases. He wrote a letter of apology to the fan base that Lonn Trost and the Yankees could learn from.

And my Sox friend Tyler is irate. He wants to know when Boston fans get an apology:

Here’s my big issue with all of this though, where the hell is OUR apology? Where is the apology for ridiculously high ticket prices (sh*t I’d love it if our tickets capped at $112), the second mortgage I had to take out just to buy a hot dog, and not to mention the classless buffoonery we’ve seen from the three stooges in their cushy box seats since they came here? Where’s our apology for gutting Terry Francona, screwing up the Jon Lester negotiations while insulting him in the process, and ruthlessly canning Don Orsillo or putting “sexy” star power over actually good players? Honestly I’m so sick of the Sox ownership and management I just have nothing left to say. Heck, maybe we could take a cue from Liverpool fans and stage a walkout or boycott at Fenway Park because apparently nothing is getting through to these bone-headed greedy pieces of crap who pretend to care.

Remember what I said about us having a lot in common with Boston fans? See what I mean?

Lonn Trost still has yet to apologize for his offensive comments about fans.  And now Boston fans are losing StubHub; the Red Sox are starting their own ticket service, with a price floor, of course. Whatever happened to the free market?

Anyhow, I wonder what we fans can do to show our disgust. Would a walkout work? Petitions? Simply not buying tickets? It's a conundrum, to be sure. Any thoughts of what might get team owners' attention? Please leave it in the comments section below.

Lonn Trost's comments harken back to an ugly time in Yankees' history

Thursday was the Yankees' first official day of spring training, when pitchers and catchers report. This should have been a fun, exciting day for us Bombers fans who haven't seen baseball since October. But instead, Yankees COO Lonn Trost managed to make headlines that day for all the wrong reasons, as I discussed yesterday.

You've heard me say this a hundred times about the Hal Steinbrenner regime in Yankeeland. Since Prince Hal neither really has a fan's interest in the Yankees, nor any business sense short of being a member of the Lucky Sperm Club, he allows the inmates to run the asylum. And that's how you have somebody like Trost, an elitist twit who has said so many dumb things over the years, speaking for the team and stepping all over the first day of spring training. All because he was apparently ticked off over what the tabloids and bloggers like yours truly said about the team's new ticket policy. Ha!

Per Roger Kahn's 'Rickey & Robinson,'  Lonn Trost is carrying on
a grand premium seat tradition.  pic.twitter.com/fSo8eoabY6

— Greg Prince (@greg_prince) February 19, 2016

Trost's quote was all over the media last night. Does Prince Hal agree with him? Is anybody in the organization going to rebuke the COO for it? The only followup I've seen from the team was in this morning's New York Daily News: "A Yankee spokesman said Trost meant no offense by the comment." That's it? Not even a quote with a person's name attached? That's unacceptable. Trost insulted the team's fan base. He needs to apologize, and/or lose his job. Enough!

There are a few more things I wanted to point out about this controversy. The first is a quote that Faith and Fear in Flushing's Greg Prince highlighted from Roger Kahn's book Rickey & Robinson. It's about why the Yankees took so long to integrate the team. It was eight long years after Jackie Robinson for the Yanks to bring up an African-American player -- Elston Howard. And part of the reason is that George Weiss feared that having black players would bring in black fans that would alienate the rich, white fans. Oy. That was an ugly part of the team's history. And Trost's awful quote, whether it is race-based or class-based or both, harkens back to that attitude.

The second was my friend Steve's point about season ticket sales. Steve, a former season ticketholder, wrote about this situation in his Was Watching Yankee blog about the idea that a season ticketholder with a premium seat would be mad if somebody sitting next to him paid less money:

It doesn’t matter to me if the Yankees charged me $90 and they charged some other guy $90 – and then that other guy went out and decided to sell his ticket for $2. That’s his problem, not mine. In fact, it’s REALLY not my problem. I had season tickets to the Yankees from 2001 through 2014. And, a big part of why I gave them up after FOURTEEN YEARS was the fact that no one wants to pay face value for a Yankees ticket anymore and I was taking a beating on games where I couldn’t attend. And, that’s probably the Yankees real problem. People like me will no longer buy their tickets because of the secondary market. That’s why they want to shut down the secondary market.

The answer? Don’t charge so much for tickets that it makes it so attractive to buy them on the secondary market at such a cheap rate. Or, put a product on the field that makes people want to see the games so bad that they would never consider selling their tickets. It’s all about supply and demand. Create the demand for the supply and the market will take care of itself.

You know, this is New York. Where people brag about getting deals and paying less for something than others. And I think what it comes down to in Yankeeland is that Yankee fans got tired of paying full price for tickets, especially when, as Steve points out, they would lose so much money on the season tickets they couldn't use. The only advantage to having any sort of season ticket plan is the ability to get playoff tickets. But when the team has had exactly one postseason game in the last three years, that doesn't really matter much anymore, now does it?

And finally, if this alleged ticket fraud that Trost keeps on harping on is such an issue, then why hasn't Ticketmaster dumped print-at-home tickets completely? Instead, they STILL offer this as an option. It says right there on their website: "It’s your tickets, your way: Print at home OR get in with your smartphone. You decide! Just remember: While you can print the same ticket you put on your phone, the first one scanned at the venue is the only one that will work." Yet Trost claimed yesterday that "multiple people" were getting into Yankee Stadium with the same ticket. Hmmmm. Sounds like he played fast and loose with the truth!

Yankees' COO Lonn Trost to the 99%: Drop dead

Yankees Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost has an elitist excuse for why secondary ticket sales are bad, and why the team is trying to stop any other parties from doing them but themselves. Neil Best of Newsday recounted his explanation, as told to WFAN's Boomer and Carton (emphasis added):

"The problem below market at a certain point is that if you buy a ticket in a very premium location and pay a substantial amount of money. It’s not that we don’t want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for a ticket and [another] fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it’s frustrating to the purchaser of the full amount."

Trost then added a comment that raised eyebrows on social media because of its seemingly elitist undertones. "And quite frankly," he said, "the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base."

So basically, only the 1% deserve to get to sit in the good seats in Yankee Stadium. And the 99% better know their place, because they don't belong in the premium location. And their very presence might upset those who paid full price for such seats.

Left unsaid was how these people would know that these interlopers paid less. Unless, you know, they weren't the "right" race or social class to be there. Not to mention that the idea that somebody could pay $1.50 for premium seats is ludicrous.

Whose idea in Yankeeland, exactly, was it to get Trost to defend this policy? He is about the worst spokesman for the team imaginable. He's the guy who blamed Hurricane Sandy for slow ticket sales. Who defended charging $2600 for the top seats at the new Yankee Stadium, saying "Some people can afford to fly first class and others can't." Who justified keeping kids from getting in front of the moat to see batting practice. Who called the obstructed seats in the current stadium's outfield merely "architecturally shadowed."  Who decided it was a good idea in 2013 to pick a fight with StubHub, claiming that they were "greedy," accused them, with no evidence, of counterfeit tickets and banned them from doing e-ticket sales. Then who had to back off on that plan when Yankee ticket sales plummeted.

It looks like he apparently was incensed by reports in the newspapers, and by bloggers about how the Yankees' new ticket policy would keep fans from buying last-minute tickets on StubHub. "Unfortunately, the papers, the bloggers have it wrong," he claimed, and said he presented the New York Post and the New York Daily News with the "facts." (An aside: Speaking of facts, I know for a fact, through somebody in the know, that I am one of the very bloggers he was unhappy about. I can't tell you how much that warms my heart!)

Trost also said fans could still use StubHub's "last minute pickup center that's right up from Yankee Stadium" to pick up hard copy tickets. Funny how Trost described that ticket center's location that way. Because when he first picked a fight with them, the team sued to make StubHub close their truly convenient location at 68 East 161st Street, saying it was too close to the ballpark. And StubHub had to move to a less convenient location for fans at the Bronx Terminal Market, Level 1, at 651 River Ave and 151st Street. which is almost 1/2 mile away from the stadium. All to prevent the team's own fans from using them.

He also blatantly played fast and loose with the truth about StubHub when it came to them being able to do mobile tickets."We know that StubHub can transfer tickets on mobile. If they choose not to, that's not our business." 

That is untrue. I reached out to Cameron Papp, StubHub's Communications Manager, to get clarification. Papp told me that they would not be able to do so without the Yankees' agreeing to this:

"As of now, due to this new policy, StubHub will only be able to offer the listings of hard tickets for Yankees games. If there’s enough time before the game, the seller will send their hard tickets through UPS directly to the buyer. If there’s not enough time before the game, the seller can send or drop off their tickets at our ticket office outside of the stadium ahead of time for the buyer to pick them up on game day."

Papp also gave me this official statement from StubHub:

"StubHub believes that the best customer experience is one on a free and open marketplace where fans can buy and sell tickets whenever and wherever they want. Yankees fans will still be able to purchase tickets on StubHub up until game time" if they go to the StubHub ticket office."

But the electronic method is out. Glenn Lehrmann of StubHub explained this to Neil Best:

"The only way we can transfer tickets is if the Yankees and Ticketmaster provide us with an API [application programming interface] feed that would allow us to do that,” he said. “It’s protected, and they have not granted us access, nor have they granted anyone access. If they wanted to grant us access, this is a different conversation."

* In addition, Trost claimed that people were printing out "multiple copies" of print-at-home tickets on "copy machines" and that "multiple people" were getting in. "And we don't even know how many," he said. Which is BS. Print-at-home tickets have a scannable barcode. And you can print one hundred copies of that ticket, but only the first person who had the ticket would get in. If the Stadium was somehow letting people in without correctly scanning their ticket, that's their incompetence, isn't it, not StubHub's or anybody else's.

* He also talked about Eric Schneiderman, New York's Attorney General, partially blaming him for the move to mobile. But he never mentioned that Schneiderman was looking into the team's policy of having a price floor in the Yankees Ticket Exchange; it may be ruled as anti-competitive. Gee, I wonder why.

Anyhow, it's really gut-wrenching to see such a twit represent the team I love. And to show such blatant contempt for fans like me. At a time when the Yankees face increased competition for ticket sales from the Mets, they ought to be doing their best to put fannies in the seats, not get those fannies to decide to sit at home on the couch and watch the games on TV instead. Good grief.

Is Zack Hample, the guy who caught A-Rod's 3000th hit, a righteous dude or a jerk?

Zack Hample hold's A-Rod's 3000th hit ball.

So, I have been on record advocating over and over that if a fan catches a historic ball at a game, whether it be Derek Jeter's 3000th hit or Alex Rodriguez's 660th homer or 3000th hit,  that he or she should make as much money as possible out of it. Sorry, but if it were me catching such a historic ball, I would want some cold hard cash in return. Getting some trinkets wouldn't cut it.

The only exception is what happened to Frank Burke, the person who caught San Francisco Giant Travis Ishikawa's pennant-winning home run. Burke, as I noted in an article for Guideposts.org, got to throw out the first pitch at Game 3 of the World Series that year. That is something unique you would not be able to buy on your own with the money you would get from selling the ball.

That being said, Zack Hample is really testing my patience. He is the professional ballhawk (or, as I call him, ballhog) who caught A-Rod's 3000th hit, which was a homer. Today, when he was whining online about A-Rod not following him on Twitter, I pointed out what he said earlier in the week, when somebody asked what he would do if he caught #Arod3k.

Hey, @AROD, I'm the guy who snagged your 3,000th hit. Any chance for a follow back? It would mean a lot to me.
— Zack Hample (@zack_hample) June 23, 2015

.@zack_hample You mean the guy you said you would give the finger and a dummy ball to if you caught 3000? https://t.co/VLN6ZhEkyj

— Subway Squawkers (@subwaysquawkers) June 23, 2015

Folks, what is problematic for me is that Hample is, pardon my French, a world-class douche bag. Seriously, if you type his name into Twitter, the first search terrn that comes up is "Zack Hample douche." (Sorry, I try to keep the Squawks G-rated, but sometimes the truth must be told here!)
I have heard too many stories from various people about how Hample knocks down children to snag balls before games to disbelieve them.

Not to mention the way he conducts himself. Squawker Jon pointed out Friday that the spotlight would not be kind to Mister Hample, and he was right. And I really have an issue with a 37-year-old man trolling for balls like this. Leave the glove at home, dude.

Anyhow, Hample, who apparently comes from a wealthy family, is now talking with Yankee front office bigwigs Randy Levine and Lonn Trost about what he might want for the ball. Talk about a meeting of the minds -- or, more to the point, of the d-bags! Sorry, pardon my French again, but the truth must be told here! (Squawker Jon said that me using this term burned a bridge to Yankeeland here. I said that bridge was napalmed long ago!)

At any rate, how ironic is it that the team that won't pay A-Rod for the 660-homer milestone is negotiating on his behalf for another milestone! Jon said that Hal Steinbrenner authorized the front office's pursuit of the ball. Hilarious!

In his negotiations, Hample brought up a "wish list," including donations to charity, to try to make it seem as if he isn't a jerk. Won't work, dude! You pretty much emanate jerkitude. You wear an umpire's cap to games, for goodness sake! But own it! I say go for that cold hard cash, and forget pretending that this is about charity or any such other high-minded pretense. They need to show you the money.

However, that also means giving the Yankees a simple price, and not doing these drama queen negotiations. If Hample doesn't want to negotiate with the Yankees, then sell the ball at an auction house and be done with it. But please, put an end to this drawn-out saga already. Good grief.

Lonn Trost and Yankees cry uncle on StubHub; will allow electronic tickets

Remember the whole to-do this winter about how the Yankees came up with their own ticket exchange system with Ticketmaster, snubbing StubHub? And how the only way Yankee fans were going to be able to print out electronic tickets on the secondary market was with the Yankees Ticket Exchange? And that because of this, StubHub was going to have to open up a location by Yankee Stadium for fans to get their tickets before the game (a move the Yankees fought in court)?

Well, guess what? The Yankees have cried uncle on StubHub, folding like a cheap suit on the electronic tickets issue. They will now allow fans to print electronic tickets from StubHub and other secondary market sites from a window of 48 hours to three hours before the game. Oh, and that three-hour window before the game also applies for the Yankees' own ticket exchange, so it's not like you can get the tickets any later from them. This is a huge, huge concession on the Yankees' part, and it takes away the need for StubHub to have that location by the Stadium. After all, if fans can print out tickets at home in that time frame, they won't need to go to a StubHub office to do so.

If a Yankee tree falls in the forest...

Only thing is, nobody in the mainstream media seems to have noticed that the Yankees have made such a big concession. But blogger Bob of BobsBlitz.com did. He wrote about how Yankee bigwig Lonn Trost, who talked last month on Mike Francesa's WFAN radio show about how fans would no longer would be able to get e-tickets from StubHub, has changed his tune.

Yet Trost won't admit that the Yankees have changed their tune and reversed policy. He tried to act like this was the deal all along, and denied that this was a change in policy, even though Francesa kept on asking him about this. (Click here to see the video.) Granted, fans cannot download and print out the tickets before that 48-hour time frame unless they use the Yankees' official ticket exchange, but that really isn't a big deal for most people.

So why did Trost and the Yankees change their mind? Bob's Blitz sums it up on what has happened since Trost's February pronouncement:

A little over a month later fans have been bombarded with Yankee ads for season and single tickets. Banners, radio, TV. 24/7 -- why? Because they can't sell anywhere near the amount of tickets they forecasted internally. And the one way to, they hope, increase the worst sales they've seen in over a decade? Allow StubHub users to print tickets during a window of 48-3 hours before game time.

You know, sorta like a partnership.

Oh, and then lie about the 02/12/13 conversation to Mike Francesa to cover up the change of course due to the poor sales.

Yep. I've noticed the Yankee internet banner ads everywhere. I have also noticed that there are plenty of tickets available, even for opponents like the Red Sox and Mets, on Yankees.com, and that discount sites like Goldstar.com are offering half-priced tickets for the Yankees.

And don't forget that if tickets are not sold on secondary markets, or if would-be season ticket holders won't buy tickets because they are afraid they won't be able to resell them in those markets, that this means those seats will be empty. This not only looks bad on TV, but it means fewer sales at the concession and souvenir stands. So after all the smearing we heard from the Yankeeland front office this winter, insinuating that StubHub was the reason for everything bad facing the Yankees, now the team has caved on letting them sell those tickets.

I have to wonder when anybody in Yankeeland will ever face any accountability for making such bad decisions. Picking a fight with StubHub, who is an official partner of MLB, never seemed to make any sense. Yet the front office has spent more time on that this winter than with coming up with a coherent plan for this team's future. And the NYC sports media doesn't seem to notice -- or care. Shocking.

Lonn Trost, Hal Steinbrenner show the Yankees' real priority: Smashing StubHub

I can't remember a spring training when I was this cynical about the Yankees' prospects for the season. World Series or bust? Really? More like $189M or bust.

That's what happens when you have a disastrous offseason like this one. I mean, really -- what Brian Cashman moves, exactly, excited you this winter? Signing the injury-ridden ex-Boston Red Sox Kevin Youkilis for $12 million, way above what anybody else would pay him? Going with Francisco Cervelli and Chris Stewart as your catchers? Starting spring without a right-handed hitting outfielder?

Then you have Hal Steinbrenner, who is so clueless that he told the Wall Street Journal he was "surprised" to hear of the fans' "anger." Really, Hal? Where have you been, exactly? Oh, I know. You've been worried about the evil StubHub, the real enemy.

I know it's become a cliche to wonder "What would George Steinbrenner do?" when it comes to any new development in Yankeeland, but when the only time you hear the team's co-owner show any passion, it's about smashing StubHub, it's pretty sad. Here's what Hal recently said in a statement about the Yankees moving to Ticketmaster for their new official secondary market venue:

"The Yankees Ticket Exchange will be a safe, convenient, reliable and expedient way to purchase and sell guaranteed authentic Yankees tickets," Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said in a statement. "It is unfortunate that unscrupulous resellers utilize deceptive practices and tactics and employ unofficial websites, all of which give rise to counterfeit tickets."

I'm sorry if I missed this epidemic of counterfeit tickets, especially given that StubHub guarantees all of the tickets they sell. The real issue, of course, is that the Yankees are greedy, and even though they have already gotten paid the first time around for ticket sales, they don't actually want to see a free market when it comes to reselling those tickets. They also don't like it when the secondary market shows the real value of those tickets, which is a lot lower than the Yanks would like to think they are.

Oh, and I have to laugh at the idea of anything connected with Ticketmaster as being fan-friendly. They are the ones who came up with "convenience fees" to print own your tickets. And while the new program's fees for sellers are 5% for season ticket holders, it is 15% for those who are not season ticket holders.

Lonn Trost blames Hurricane Sandy and snowstorm for slow ticket sales

Then there's the Yanks' Lonn Trost, who has made his contempt for those terrible Yankee fans who actually look for deals on tickets abundantly clear. He was recently on Mike Francesa talking his nonsense about ticket speculators, and comparing it the the Securities and Exchange Commission needing to crack down on short sellers.

Trost also claimed that slow ticket sales were due to Hurricane Sandy and the recent snowstorm. Huh? The hurricane was October 29, and Nemo was a typical winter snowstorm when it came to New York City (New England and Long Island was another story.) And there is zero evidence that either of them have had any effect on ticket sales.

If the Steinbrenner kids actually knew anything about business, they would realize that the lower prices on StubHub are not due to the bogeyman of ticket speculators. And counterfeit tickets are not really an issue. The real issue is that this isn't a very interesting, inspiring team right now, the tickets are way overpriced, and the novelty of the new stadium has worn off.

Trost also complained about StubHub being greedy, making 25% on each ticket sold. Strong words from a guy who sells $1300 seats for a baseball game. He also threatened to sue the organization for daring to have an office across the street from the stadium. (Right now, StubHub can still sell Yankees tickets, but fans can no longer print the tickets out on their home computer. The office would allow them to get hard copies of the tickets at their location.)

At any rate, after seeing what the Yankees choose to focus on, why should I be excited about this season? What is the team motto for 2013? Another year older and even more injury-ridden? You'll pay more for tickets and you'll like it? Good grief.

Do the Joba! Chamberlain's pitching, great play bugs the Indians

Even though Joba Chamberlain swallowed a bug, he still had a great outing against Cleveland, pitching eight stellar innings. I listened to the first half of the game on the radio, and was lucky to be arriving home just around the time when Joba made that belly flop double play. So I got to see it live. (Click here if you haven't seen it yet.)

The play was both athletic and hilarious - Andy Pettitte and CC Sabathia were shown guffawing over it. I'm thinking the Joba play could be a new dance - the catch on the ground, the hat falling off, the throw, and then the finale, a double fist pump with a little shaking around? Throw in some bug swatting, and you've got a hit. Do the Joba!

Hmmm - are Red Sox fans going to complain about the double fist pump, given that Yankees weren't leading at the time (the score was tied)? Meanwhile, Jonathan Papelbon throws a towel at a photographer, and nobody says a peep. But I digress.

That eighth inning brought back some bad bug flashbacks, though. And when YES showed the 2007 midge clip, I got angry all over again at why the Yanks didn't walk off the field in protest. Fortunately, the Rally Midge didn't get the job done this time, and the Yanks won.

I did miss seeing Nick Swisher have to fight a flock of seagulls last night. Maybe they were attracted to him because of the SwishHawk hair?

In other news, the Yanks set an MLB record with their 18th consecutive game without an error. Congrats.

Now the Yanks head home, back to the Homer-Happy House That Trost Built. With Texas in the house tonight, expect to crane your neck a lot watching balls fly out of the stadium this series.

What do you think of Joba Chamerlain, midges, or anything else on your mind? Leave us a comment!

Yankee front office forgets that this is a two-team town

Yankee COO Lonn Trost suggested yesterday that "what we're really talking about is memories" in the team's latest money-grab in selling off parts of the old Stadium. But maybe the team's front office ought to worry about making new memories. And maybe they also ought to worry about the the other team in town making new memories.

I watched the first half of last night's Yankee game at home, and I was amazed at how vocal the Toronto crowd was. And they even had people sitting in the good seats and everything! Too bad Roy Halladay killed the Yanks, as he always seems to do. Oh, and Derek Jeter has a sore oblique.

But I missed seeing the second half of last night's game, as I had a doctor's appointment (my MD has evening hours.) I knew the waiting room had a TV, so I rather cavalierly assumed that the people waiting there would be watching the Yankee game. Well, there was a baseball game on, alright, but it was the Mets. (I can only imagine what Squawker reader Uncle Mike's reaction would have been if he were in the waiting room!)

So while I did miss the streaker, I got to see Carlos Beltran steal third, his walkoff walk (which I did call as soon as he came up to the plate!) and the Mets' victory. The team seems to have recovered nicely from me jinxing them by showing up at Citi Field Monday night.

My point in bringing up the Mets is this: New York is a two-team town, although the Yankee front office acts like it isn't. And one of the big advantages the Yanks had over the Mets - the better stadium - is no longer there. Squawker reader Peggy may love the new Yankee Stadium, but I think Citi Field (gulp!) has a heck of a lot going for it that the new ballpark in the Bronx doesn't.

The Yanks don't want kids to mess up their precious Legends seating, while the Mets have a whole Kiddie Field/FanFest section in their ballpark. Big difference.

And the fact that the Yanks still haven't sold out a game shows that I'm not the only one who isn't feeling the new Stadium. But Lonn Trost has an explanation for that too - like Milli Vanilli, he blames it on the rain. When asked about the empty seats, he said:

"Can you really tell what's taking place in two homestands with 90 percent of them in rain? I can't.''

90% rain? Really? Ross from New Stadium Insider has been tracking the attendance - and the weather conditions - for each game. Here's the reality, from his site:

4-16-09 1:08 PM/ 48,271 / Sunny, lower 60's
4-17-09 1:05 PM/ 45,101 / Sunny, upper 60's
4-18-09 3:40 PM/45,167 / Partly Sunny, mid 70's
4-19-09 1:05 PM/ 43,068 / Mostly Cloudy, mid 60's
4-21-09 7:05 PM/ 42,065 / Cloudy/drizzle, low 50's
4-22-09 1:05 PM / 43,342 / Cloudy/drizzle, low 50's
4-30-09 7:05 PM / 43,388 / Cloudy, upper 50's
5-1-09 7:05 PM / 44,058 / Cloudy/rain showers, mid 60's
5-2-09 1:05 PM / 44,970 / Sunny mid 60's
5-4-09 7:05 PM / 46,426 / Rain, low 50's (2:16 rain delay at start)
5-5-09 7:05 PM / 46.810 / rain showers, upper 40's
5-6-09 7:05 PM / 42,585 / Cloudy/rain showers, upper 50's
5-7-09 7:05 PM / 43,769 / Partly Cloudy, lower 60's

True, the weather has been bad, but not as bad as Trost is claiming.

Aside from Trost's weather exaggeration, it appears that no matter how bad the weather, the paid attendance is going to be at least 42,000 per game. But most of these games have had a lot fewer people show up, as evidenced by all those empty seats on TV.

At any rate, what Trost and Randy Levine miss is this - there is a distinct lack of buzz surrounding the Yanks this year. And selling overpriced trinkets from the old ballpark only serves to emphasize that the front office seems more concerned with making money than giving regular fans an experience to remember. It would be nice if this team would stop living in the glory days of the past and try to focus on giving all fans - not just the ones making six figures - a great experience now.

It pains me as a Yankee fan to see the team I love run this way. Where have you gone, George Steinbrenner?

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Lonn Trost remembers the little people - with $399 bleacher seats

Got a few thousand bucks burning a hole in your bucket? It's your lucky day! Lonn Trost, still licking his wounds from the $2600 seats debacle, and Steiner Sports announced the latest thing Yankee fans are being pushed to spend money on - overpriced seats, grass and dirt from the new Stadium.

According to USA Today:

Yankees Steiner Collectibles is "concerned" about how the economic recession will impact sales, said Brandon Steiner, chief executive of Steiner Sports. "We have to be careful on the prices. We're not going to stick some insane prices in people's faces," he said.

At the low end, there will be items under a few hundred dollars such as the Monument Park bricks, seatbacks and bleachers seats the "Average Joe" will be able to buy, he said.

Um, Brandon, charging $399 for a bleacher seat is an insane price. So is selling an inch of freeze-dried grass for $80. Not to mention that when the city had a sale a few years ago of Stadium seats, three of them went for $1500 (I remember because I ordered the seats for my brother, who was in Iraq at the time.) Now, these same seats are $750 a piece.

You can also bid on the chance to win Jeffrey Maier's seat at Yankee Stadium. This idea is just so wrong on so many levels. First off, Maier wasn't even sitting when he interfered with Tony Tarasco - remember, he ran up against the right field wall.

Second, there were six World Championships in the post-1973 Stadium, with a heck of a lot more memorable moments than the Maier oddity. Not to mention all the famous home run balls landing in those seats, and all the celebrities who watched a game at the Stadium over the years.

And the one individual seat you can buy that commemorates a specific event is where a 12-year-old kid sat in 1996 before he left his seat to interfere with a game? Good grief.

Announcing yet another money grab for the Yanks wasn't even the more odious thing Trost did today. Get this - when asked if the Yankees would change their policy of not allowing fans near field level for batting practice, the way most teams do, Trost said no:

"There's an area by the Legends Suite which is not an area that fans can get into," Trost said. "If you purchase a suite, do you want somebody in your suite? If you purchase a home, do you want somebody in your home?"

My thoughts:

* What an inadvertently telling observation on Trost's part, that no "fans" have seats in the luxury seating area.

* Since when did a seat become a suite? Last time I checked, those seats may be plush, with teak armrests and all, but they don't have walls or roofs. Thanks for playing, Lonn.

* If somebody is purchasing a home by buying Yankee tickets, do they get to do what they want with the property? Or sell their own advertising on the seats? How about sleeping there? After all, it's their home!

* How many of the rich people are actually in their seats during batting practice, anyway? Two?

* And the Yanks aren't just banning fans from the rich people's area - you can't even watch batting practice from the first row of seats in the outfield unless they're your seats. Ridiculous.

* Somehow, virtually every other team has figured out a way to let the fans be close to the field during batting practice, and still send them back to their seats before the game. And some of them even have - shocker - regular autograph sessions featuring their players. Imagine that.

Granted, even if fans were allowed to be somewhere in the field section, the chances are pretty slim that fans would actually get an autograph at a Yankee game. I've been going to games since the 1970s, and I got very few autographs of Bomber players. What I used to do instead is go to the visitors' side and ask them for autographs instead. Much better odds. At any rate, it's still fun to see the players interact. But only the rich people get to see that up close and personal now.

At any rate, it's amazing how Lonn Trost still has a job, after so mismanaging the new Stadium, on everything from the dimensions to the pricing to customer service. It's mind-boggling.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Phil of the Future shows Yankees' future

Last night's game may only count as just one out of 162, but I still found it incredibly satisfying to watch. As Subway Squawkers reader Roger9 put it:

Finally, a night where we don't have to walk away in disgust. It all came together...young pitching, hitting...everything! Will it carry over and become infectious? Only time will tell.

Seeing Phil Hughes pitch so well was thrilling to watch. So was that 10-run inning! Loved seeing the look on Jose Molina's face after his grand slam - talk about looking happy to be there!

Finally, Phil of the Future ended up being Phil of the Present. And Mark Melancon looked pretty nifty as well. Oh, and A-Rod is getting closer to returning to the field. This is all great news for the Yankees, after a lousy week.

One question, though - what happened to Hughes' glasses? There was a whole to-do that he needed glasses last season. Is he wearing contacts now?

* * *

I was thinking some more about the Yankees lowering ticket prices. I have to say that I find it delicious to see the front office humiliated into doing this. Does that make me a bad person?

Here's the thing - Randy Levine and Lonn Trost had such hubris. They somehow thought that they could get away with charging literally thousands of dollars more for their top tickets than any other team. This, during the worst economic times since the Great Depression. Talk about out of touch.

Today's New York Times talks about why the prices were lowered:

“It was starting to hurt the overall brand,” said Donny Deutsch, chairman of Deutsch Inc., an advertising agency, when asked about the original pricing strategy. “People start asking whether you care about the fans.”

Yep. Why is it that most baseball teams, including top draws like the Red Sox, Dodgers, and Cubs, noticed the economic climate six months ago, and instituted price freezes? Some teams, like the Giants, even lowered some of their prices this year.

Yet the Yanks kept on pushing their ridiculous ticket prices, acting like they were such great businessmen. They're not. It's not exactly surprising that the same front office who had between $300 and 500 million in cost overruns on the new stadium also butchered the ticket pricing. How is it that these folks get to keep their jobs?

While the ticket prices really should be lowered so that the average person can afford more of their seats, I do enjoy seeing Trost and Levine with egg on their faces. Heh.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

The Yankee game was good; the atmosphere - not so much

There were a ton of Yankee homers - five, to be exact - in yesterday's victory. Too bad the crowd sounded so lame, even during Derek Jeter's game-winning homer. And that there were so many empty seats gone to waste.

Take a look at the photos from Sliding Into Home, The Girl Who Loved Andy Pettitte, and the New Stadium Insider to see what I'm talking about.

But spin, spin, spin is the word in Yankeeland. They're claiming that yesterday's attendance was 45,101, which is just laughable, given how many empty seats were on display yesterday, including entire unsold sections.

And what's more, the Yankee front office is claiming that they're happy with that 45K attendance.

Yankee president Randy Levine, fresh from telling Newsday's Neil Best that only the media, and not the fans, care about all the netting we now see on Yankee broadcasts, said to the New York Times:

“We’re actually very pleased, based on the history of reduced attendance for the second game of the year,” the Yankees’ president, Randy Levine, said. “We significantly exceeded even the last year of Yankee Stadium.”

That's just silly. You can't compare attending the second game of any other year, even last season, to being in the second game at a brand-new stadium. Attendance last year was bigger at the end of the season, not the beginning, as fans went to see their last game at the old ballpark. This year should have been the opposite, with fans rushing to see their first game at the new ballpark. So yesterday should have been a sellout. But heck, even Opening Day wasn't really a sellout.

The Yankees have a huge problem on their hands, with all those empty seats. No matter how many ads they run in the Wall Street Journal, they're not going to be able to sell those ridiculously-priced seats.

And I don't want to hear how the Yankee front office were victims of the economic meltdown. Even in the best of times, not many people are willing to spend $350, let alone $2650, to see a baseball game. And we're not in good times. Besides, this isn't football, where there are only eight home games; there are 81 home games in baseball.

The other issue is how much worse the affordable seats are now. The upper deck seats are reportedly 30 feet back from where they were in the old ballpark. Over a thousand of the bleacher seats are obstructed by that dopey Mohegan Sun sports bar - a place that charges $750 a year just to join, and that membership fee doesn't include food, drinks, or admission. What a deal, eh?

Good businessmen change with the times. Oprah Winfrey, to name one example, has toned down the ostentatiousness of her show to reflect what's going on in the world right now.

But more than six months after the economy tanked, the Yankee front office, most notably Randy Levine and Lonn Trost, still seem to think that we're still living in boom town, instead of the worst economy since the Great Depression. And what's more, they want to rub our noses in the luxury. Time for them to get a reality check.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!