Get a foul ball for just a few thousand dollars

You are looking at Not Very Much Attended Premium Seating at the new Yankee Stadium, which didn't take long to thin down a mite, especially in the pricey seats, for non-Opening Day crowds. The gent in the foreground in pinstripes is on the freaking field. One generally assumes that, you know, great swaths of empty seats should not be the thing closest to him, no?

Shockingly, New York Fan, even New York Corporate Fan Guy, hasn't been too interested in ponying up for the $2500 seats this year. I wonder why? Oh, right, because we're in a freaking recession that's making people reconsider, perhaps permanently (fingers crossed), the wisdom of such things.

Oh, and there's also this. NY Baseball Fan, for all of his flaws, is actually there to see the game, and not the freaking building, you unconscionable rubes. Enjoy your sparkling new albatrosses. (And no, according to the NYT, there are no plans afoot to price 'em down. In the immortal words of Nelson Muntz, "I *said* Ha, Ha...")

Oh Beautiful for Spacious Seating

Today, I took the Shooter Eldest to see the Orioles play the Rangers in Baltimore, as part of a continuing pattern of trying to get her interested in baseball by taking her to different settings for it. The game was marked by a persistent drizzle and an even more persistent sucking by Rangers starting pitcher Vincente Padilla, who Phillies fans will remember for much the same behavior when he was wearing their laundry.

The Rangers are an odd team. You take what appears to be exceptional starting talent -- Ian Kinsler has been one of the best five hitters in the game at second base in the first half, Michael Young can handle the stick, Milton Bradley and Josh Hamilton have been exceptional, etc., etc.... but I'm not sure how good they are, really, because they play in a bandbox. The arms all seem to throw hard, but no one misses bats very much. Defensively, they all seem to move pretty well, but they do seem to make a lot of errors. Managerially, they come from a good Oakland pedigree (Ron Washington and Art Howe), but they do things like leave Padilla out to die in the first game of a three-game set, when you'd think that you'd really want to try harder to take the opener and set the tone for the weekend. Add it all up, and you've got a .500 team that just seems like it's on a treadmill, despite having a lot of nice pieces.

As for the Orioles, it tells you all that you need to know that with a 4:35 start on a Friday July 4, when no one could possibly be working, that the paid attendance was 21,363. With the win, the home team moved to three games above .500, and the visitors to one game above .500. It's hard to imagine either team really staying in the hunt for the playoffs, but something odd has been going on in the AL this year -- exceptional mediocrity. Ten out of 14 teams are above .500, with only the Mariners, Jays, Indians and Royals seriously tanking. (By contrast, six out of 16 in the NL are over .500.)

The change is that the Lords of the AL East aren't crushing the world like they used to, and there hasn't been a breakout team in the Central. This also means that any team that's thinking hard about the wildcard -- or, potentially, making a trade (or not making a move) -- has more to consider. In past years, the wild-card was almost always the AL East runner-up, or maybe a very strong AL West team. Now, it could be anyone, from any direction... which means that a team like Oakland (five out of their division) could be a seller despite only being a couple of games out of the wild-card. With so many contenders, banking on it has become the crapshoot that it's always been in the NL.

A final note on Charm City... independent of my bad feelings about new stadiums, Camden Yards is still a perfect little jewel, and the fact that so many things that it does are now commonplace (i.e., a dedicated little kids area, wide councourses, a standing area in the outfield bleachers, varied concessions, etc.) doesn't make it any less of an accomplishment. The life of MLB fans may be more expensive than it used to be, but it is also definitively better from its stadia, and the Orioles made it happen.

Sunday in the park with Joba

Today, for the single good reason of letting the Shooter Eldest say she's been to the old Yankee Stadium, I took her to their game against Kansas City. Here are some notes.

> Joba Chamberlain was better today than in his first start, but still not all that good; Kansas City at home is a team that you should not be comfortable giving up much of anything to, really. For a guy with great stuff, he really does seem like someone you can bleed pitches from, just from spoiling the fastball with foul balls. He also doesn't look comfortable with anything but heat and the slider; maybe he'll go to the third and fourth pitchers if he's ever working with a lead, or just a more traditional pitch court. But if Jorge Posada doesn't fail to squeeze a high fastball, he might have made it to five innings and gotten a win today. (The Jose Guillen homer he gave up was a very big no doubt job, though.)

> The Royals had two players today that did much of anything: Joey Gathright, who made three fantastic catches that kept the game close. He didn't get on base, but he was unreal. The second was Guillen, who might be the only Royals offensive player that didn't look afraid or just plain melty today. Yes, it was, um, freaking hot.

> The game turned on a classic, old-time Jason Giambi at-bat in the bottom of the sixth, as he worked a fading Zach Greinke into a long battle, then took him out to right. Back in his glory days at Oakland, he did this more or less routinely, and if he's back for one last run as a plus offensive player (with a cheesy porn stache to boot), the Yanks have much more interesting offense.

> Your hidden hero so far in the Chamberlain Transition has been Dan Giese, a Scranton pitcher who has acted as the designated Joba long man. He got eight outs today with no baserunners and three punchouts, and in a more just world, would earn himself a look after the next starter flames out. (He's not really very good, but neither is Darrell Rasner.) In both Joba starts, Giese has been effective and prevented the Yankees from having to run a parade out there.

> For the Yanks, Bobby Abreu had the first inning home, Giambi the go-ahead shot, and A-Rod the two-run double that gave them a comfort margin. If Gathright hadn't taken away three hits with exceptional plays, it wouldn't have been close. This just in... the Royals aren't very good.

> For people who care about such things, with a 3-run lead in the top of the eighth and six outs away from a series win, Joe Girardi went to... no, not Kyle Farnsworth, but the actually effective Jose Veras. No idea if that's a permanent change, or just something to do after a slugfest on Saturday, but if it's my club, I make that move. Maybe a month ago. You know what you've got with Farnsworth, and it's not good.

> A final note, for one of my favorite stadiums (and I've been to, gulp, 17 different parks over the years, many of which are no longer in existence)... until today, I never really got why anyone in their right mind would want a new yard. I've been to a half-dozen plus games there over the years, and just love the place, even though I'm really not a Yankee fan and its mind-bogglingly expensive. (My seats today were similar to what my old seats in Oakland were like, but only at a 600% cost premium.)

When you were there, you know it's for baseball, the sight lines are good, the fan base is highly entertaining, and the Bronx just doesn't seem as scary as it used to. It's no fun to drive there, but that's true of all of New York, really. So why do you need a new yard, other than to try to get more money out of a fan base that's already paying an absurd amount of jack for games?

Well, all of that is true... and then there's bringing your eight-year-old kid to the game. She's a great kid, but she appreciates having a little run-around time in a Kids Club; that doesn't exist in Yankee Stadium.

Having her with me makes me all too aware in the bathroom gender inequity issues. The hardcore security situation (and no lockers for bags) creates a dumb situation where a local bowling alley makes money, for no good reason. (And no, doing without any of her stuff in the 5 hours of round-trip train rides that I endured today isn't very possible, either.) The concourses are choked and narrow, and that is especially true when they bring in additional vendors to add options, or have to move supplies around. And when it's in the high 90s without any place to go to get a respite, that's pretty nasty, too.

The new yard might or might not address any of these issues; Yankee Fan has certainly learned to live without such features in the past 80 years. But on the off chance that anyone in MLB still cares about the next generation, they might want to think about such things. My kid had a nice enough time, but that's mostly because she's the proud owner of a foam #1 finger, rather than from anything that happened inside the building. And for what I spent today, her first trip to the Stadium is also going to her last...

Epic Drop: Top 11 Secret Stadium Curses

Your link is here, and your local NY news clip is here...



I, for one, would sleep more soundly knowing that the courts have weighed in on this matter. How else can Yankee and Sawx Fan ramp up the jerkishness?

The Giant Urinal Cake Known As Wrigley Field

(Ed. Note: Part of a continuing series where FTT throws dirt on the graves of dead stadiums to show that yes, we are freaking old. Enjoy!)

For those of you who have been following our series on Craphole Stadiums of the past, you might be wondering why we are covering an active stadium. We made a special exemption for Wrigley Field – basically the world’s largest urinal cake. Even the rats stay away from this place.

I’ve been to Wrigley probably 20-30 times over the past 20 years. The funny thing is it doesn’t feel any older each time I go. Probably because 20 years ago it was already 75 years old. I love it when Cubs fans gush about how great this old stadium is, what a treasure they have and how they want to keep it forever. Who are they kidding? You could piss down their backs, tell them it’s raining and they’d believe you. In fact, I think I actually saw that happen in the bleachers once. This thing is a relic that will be replaced as soon as the Tribune Co. sells the Cubs later this year.

The place is literally falling apart and the city almost closed Wrigley for a while a couple years back when concrete chunks of the ceiling started falling. It’s eerie how the stadium is directly tied to the team. Both fall apart when the slightest amount of stress is applied.

The hallways are cramped, the vending areas are few, and if you don’t love sausage/hot dogs/nachos, you are out of luck. And the beer of choice is Old Style. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of Old Style, go grab a Bud, Miller Lite or Coors can and put it out in the sun for a week before you drink it. That will give you an idea of the sophisticated tastes Cubs fans have. It’s one thing to be stuck with a craphole stadium, but do you have to drink crappy beer too? And they drink so much of it, they finally added a basket above the outfield walls in the early 70s. This was to keep the drunks from falling onto the field.

Wrigley’s biggest draw is its bleachers. You can go on a weekday day game and find it filled with 20 something unemployed drunks. I couldn’t think of a better representation of a fan with a team than these folks. Tickets now run upwards of $40 for a general admission seat in the bleachers. And that doesn’t guarantee you a seat either as the Cubs sell more tickets than seats for the bleachers each game.

Now I do have to give in a bit and say the bleachers have the hottest chicks in baseball regularly in attendance. But even with a new Cubs stadium they’d still be there. They are really the only good scenery at Wrigley. This photo is a pretty good sample of that talent that is out there.

Other that that, enjoy your crappy beer, your crappy view behind the pole in front of you, the crappy man operated scoreboard, the crappy team on the field and the crappy celebrity led 7th inning stretch that nobody cares about anymore.

Oh, and cut the vines off the outfield wall. This isn’t an Ivy League campus.