Given that one of the main reasons the new Yankee Stadium exists is to provide more luxury boxes than the old, it was inevitable that some longtime, partial-season-ticket holders were going to have seats at the new digs that weren’t as choice as the ones they’ve had in the past. But you would have thought any issues would have been settled by now; the first game at the new Bronx stadium is just over a month away.
The frustrations of these partial-season-ticket holders boiled over this week. It all started with a NYYFans.com forum post (which began in December 2007) detailing the endless back-and-forth between the team and the partial-season-ticket holders, hit the fanatic blogs last week, and crossed over to the papers this weekend. The primary complaint: Not only are the seats not comparable to previous season plans, but fans who had weekend plans in the past were forced to take weekday tickets that they might not be able to use. The quality of tickets are based on seniority; if fans beg off tickets they can’t utilize, they go back to the end of the queue.
Yankees Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost responded to complaints on WFAN yesterday, chiding fans for “not reading the documentation.” In other words, if you thought the Yankees were shortchanging longtime, partial-season-ticket holding fans for the sake of new revenue from luxury boxes and high-cost, full-season-ticket holders … you were right. Congratulations on accurately predicting the Yankees would side with the money.
Also in the interview, Trost responded to growing outcry about bleachers seats with obstructed views, or, as he put it, “architecturally shadowed seats,” which were first reported here back in September. Trost said the price of 600 seats would be lowered from $12 a game to $5. (Also, unlike at the old Yankee Stadium, bleacher creatures can move around the rest of the stadium.) He also said this: “We will have TVs in the walls there.” Ah, the beauty of going to a ball game … to watch TV.
