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.

Fact-checking David Ortiz's PED-denial column in the Players' Tribune

David Ortiz in his younger, smaller days.

Speak of the devil! I was just talking about David (Sherlock) Ortiz with my friend Staci on Facebook yesterday, We brought up his name because of ESPN New York noting that Alex Rodriguez now faces additional steroid tests. And just after we made the inevitable Ortiz "searching for why he tested positive" joke that many Yankee fans do, Sherlock finally addressed this issue, six years after it was revealed he tested positive for PEDs.

Ortiz is now an "Editor at Large" for Derek Jeter's Players' Tribune, and has "written" an article denying that he ever used PEDs.

An aside: I kind of find Jeter calling these athletes writing for his site "editors" and "bureau chiefs" a little weird. Players' Tribune contributor Mets pitcher Matt Harvey revealed in New York Magazine that he has business cards from the venture that say "NEW YORK BUREAU CHIEF." Really? Is Matt going to be assigning stories in the locker room, too? Marking up Juan Lagares' copy with a red pencil? Puh-lease.

Look, I make it a point of never saying "we" when it comes to the Yankees, because I ain't playing. So for athletes to be given such lofty titles for their contributions here would be like calling me a right fielder because I got stuck at that position in fifth grade gym glass.

Anyhow, I have a long memory when it comes to David Ortiz's PED denials. Plus, I wrote a lot on the issue back in 2009, when it was revealed that he tested positive in 2003. Anyhow, let's review Ortiz's claims in this article and see if they add up:

Ortiz starts his piece with a dramatic story of American drug testers showing up at his home at 7:30 in the morning in the Dominican Republic with "pee cups and big needles." He claims he has been tested "more than 80 times" for PEDs since 2004, and also says he has been tested "ten times a season" this whole time. His math doesn't add up in multiple ways (10x a year since 2004 is 110 times, not 80) and also because in 2009, he claimed he was tested "15 times" by MLB since 2003.

Incidentally, in the article I referenced above, ESPN claimed that in addition to everyone getting tested during the spring, there are only 350 random urine tests and 140 random blood tests done during each season, which, if those numbers are correct, would only cover a fraction of the 1200 players tested under the system. But we are supposed to believe that only Ortiz had been tested this many times? Really? C'mon now.

He also says, "I have never failed a single one of those tests and I never will." I say, "Neither did Alex Rodriguez and most of the players named in the Biogenesis scandal." (A-Rod reportedly told the feds he passed because he used midstream urine. If that actually works, then these tests are pretty meaningless!)

Ortiz then sez: "Some people still look at me like I’m a cheater because my name was on a list of players who got flagged for PEDs in 2003." (I want to put on my "Bette Davis in 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" voice to say, "But ya are, Blanche!")

Anyhow, after how talking about how much physical pain ballplayers are in (which I'm sure they are, but PEDs aren't painkillers!) Ortiz uses the "GNC" defense on his positive test, saying that in the early 2000s:

"I’m buying an over-the-f***ing-counter supplement in the United States of America. I’m buying this stuff in line next to doctors and lawyers. Now all of a sudden MLB comes out and says there’s some ingredient in GNC pills that have a form of steroid in them. I don’t know anything about it. If you think I’m full of it, go to your kitchen cabinet right now and read the back of a supplement bottle and honestly tell me you know what all of that stuff is. I’m not driving across the border to Mexico buying some shady pills from a drug dealer. I’m in a strip mall across from the Dunkin’ Donuts, bro."

However, contrary to his emphasis of buying the supplements in the U.S. at the friendly neighborhood GNC, Ortiz admitted in 2009 to buying some of those supplements in the Dominican Republic, where what is available over the counter is more loosey-goosey, to use an A-Rod-ism, than in the U.S. Ortiz also said then, "I definitely was a little bit careless back in those days when I was buying supplements and vitamins over the counter." Which made no sense -- why would you not pay attention to see what the stuff you took did, if for no other reason than to see if they worked?

He also doesn't mention Angel Presinal, the Dominican-born trainer who worked with both A-Rod and Ortiz, and who was banned from all MLB clubhouses after being linked to PEDs.

One of  my truisms in life is that those who are criticized the least overreact the most about it. And this whole piece seems to be a huge overreaction on Ortiz's part to mild criticism. As my friend Sully sez, the only MLB star who has gotten as much of a pass on the PED label than Andy Pettitte is Ortiz. So I don't know why he would bring this up now.

As those of us who have been paying attention in the last few years have noticed, Ortiz can be incredibly thin-skinned and self-absorbed -- a far cry from his lovable image. He whines a lot in this article, complaining about how people don't realize how hard he worked at hitting, griping about others not liking him pimping home runs -- and justifying it because he grew up poor in the Dominican Republic.

He plays up the racial angle about Dan Shaughnessy (the reporter with the red Jheri curls he refers to in the article) questioning him about PEDs in 2013; the actual conversation that they had was significantly different than the way he disparagingly describes it, with Shaughnessy making more concrete points -- that Ortiz has had injuries typical of those using PEDs and had quicker bat speed when getting older -- than he is described as doing.

Then Ortiz claims this is how he found out that he was on that failed test list:

I’ll never forget coming into the clubhouse before a day game against Oakland in 2009 when a reporter came up to me and said, “Hey, you know your name is about to be on a list of steroid users on ESPN?” I literally said, “Ha!” and walked away. God’s honest truth: I thought he was messing with me. About 30 minutes later, I’m getting dressed when I see my face pop up on the TV. I see “Failed Test. 2003.” No one had ever told me I’d failed any test.

Except The New York Times, not ESPN, broke the story. And Michael S. Schmidt, the reporter  on the case, talked to Ortiz before publishing the article, and Ortiz told him "I'm not talking about that anymore," a curious reaction from somebody who claims to have been blindsided by this news.

Also, Ortiz makes no mention in this article of the fact that the MLB players' union informed all the players who tested positive of this fact in 2004. So he knew about this back then, contrary to this dramatic story above.

At any rate, by doing this article, Ortiz is giving reporters a chance to bring this up all over again. There is already a perception among Yankee fans that A-Rod served his time for breaking the rules, while Ortiz had never been held accountable. This article certainly feeds into that perception. I think Big Papi made a big mistake in writing this.

New York Times reporter thanks the heavens for Dallas Braden

Have you had enough already of the Dallas Braden media lovefest this week? Check out how the New York Times continues their hatred of all things A-Rod. Look at New York Times writer Lynn Zinser's "Leading Off" column from earlier this week:

Sports needed Oakland’s Dallas Braden in the worst way. In fact, if he hadn’t stumbled along on his own, we might have had to make him up. But while Hollywood would have cast Kevin Costner as his manager and Betty White as his feisty grandmother, I’m not sure even screenwriters could have come up with the right details: his up-from-nowhere career, his setting up his climactic scene by popping off at the game’s premier prima donna a few weeks ago, his mom’s dying from skin cancer when he was in high school, his perfect game coming on Mother’s Day.

Why did "sports need Dallas Braden in the worst way"'? So the A-Rod-hating writers have another excuse to berate Rodriguez, the "game’s premier prima donna"? Please. 

It's also odd to hear a New York Times reporter say that if Braden hadn't existed, "we might have had to make him up." Didn't the Times get into a whole heap of trouble with Jayson Blair doing just that?

Also, hearing a journalist, let alone a New York Times writer, complain about "prima donna" behavior is amusing in and of itself. You want to see prima donnas in action? Just make the mistake of sitting in the wrong seat in the press box!

Then again, I guess I can understand Zinser jonesing for an A-Rod scandal fix. Because no other ballplayer sells papers - or gets page views - the way A-Rod does. And that goes even for the highfaluting New York Times. But until the Braden thing, Rodriguez hadn't really done anything controversial this season to give the press something to write about. (Yes, there's the Anthony Galea story, but if you bring that up, it also taints Mets stars like Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes. And you know the media doesn't really want to go there!)

Also, thanks to Rodriguez being was the biggest reason the Yankees won the World Series last year, the media can no longer do their "A-Rod is not teh clutch" meme they were so fond of. They can't say he's mentally weak anymore, so forget all their armchair psychoanalyzing. And they can no longer rely on Joe Torre to feed them negative stories on No. 13. Plus, now that Rodriguez is single, his social life is no longer scandalous.

Anyhow, the next time you read a sportswriter proclaim that the media just reports the facts without any bias, remember what that New York Times writer said about how "sports needed Dallas Braden in the worst way" - to give them something to bash Alex Rodriguez with!

What do you think? Tell us about it!