The Yankee Ticket Situation

I went a little nuts yesterday. I guess to make up for missing out on the 15 game Saturday package I wanted (and which the Yankees didn't even have the decency to tell me I wasn't getting), I bought 14 different games yesterday including opening day, the second Cubs preseason game, Red Sox Saturday in August, Mets, two different Phillies games, Angels and a few others.

The problem is that I realized there's not a lot of teams that you want to see on the Yankees schedule. Who really excites you? My list was 1) Boston, 2) Mets, 3) Phillies...and then maybe the Rays and Angels (though the Angels always kill the Yanks when I go). But should I get excited about the Mariners or Orioles or White Sox or A's (maybe the A's this year)? I hate to sound ungrateful (I did go to 21 different baseball games last year in 4 different ballparks and saw all types of crappy teams) but I just feel there's very few teams that excite me to see.

That being said, I am tremendously excited for the new stadium. Sliding Into Home has some awesome photos to get everyone excited. The biggest problem for me is that the Yankees really, really botched the ticket system this year. They made the closest sections totally unaffordable. The absolute closest seats are like $2,500 each. The ones between the bases and close are $1,525. Right behind that is $900 and the next area is $525. Who can afford that, especially in this economy? Have they heard about the recession going on?

Well what happened was that season (and half season) ticket holders moved back to the next section. This pushed back all the rest of the partial plans and those were based on seniority. Then they totally closed out the people like me who didn't have great seniority. To make it worse for those without any plan, they allowed the season and half season licensees to go on to the ticket site on Thursday and buy as many tickets as they wanted.

So when I finally went on yesterday to buy, I wasn't willing to pay a minimum of $525 a seat and I got a lot of crappy seats. We're talking about the top corners of the grandstand (with one game in the back corner of the bleachers). And a few of the games came up as $5 seats which I thought may just be because of $5 nights but I'm realizing that they're probably obstructed seats. All they say on the website is "foul pole area", though, and NOTHING about being obstructed. I wonder why they have an obstructed seats in the new stadium at all, but I'm hoping it's just the case of "there may be the foul pole in your way."

Either way, I feel bad for those who are searching through what is left (and really, if you didn't win the lottery, you're probably screwed). Unless the Yankees left some seats available for others, it's going to be slim pickings. The Yankees will have a big, new stadium and some exciting, new players but I fear that many of its fans will be shut out the first season.