We'll junk Yankee Stadium so Paris Hilton doesn't get coughed on

Today’s Times reports the price of progress:

The new Yankee $tadium pricing structure will welcome the diehard front row celebrities and CEOs that give baseball its universal appeal.

The wealthiest of the wealthiest of the wealthy.

We’ll be mired in recession, but let's all sleep well knowing that Lindsay Lohan’s pool man won't have to stand beside us at the urinal.

Here's the rub of spending $1.3 billion for a "public" stadium.

The (Legends) seats will start at $500 each and the tiptop ones — the $2,500, front-row seats — are sold out, said Lonn Trost, the Yankees’ chief operating officer.

And then this.

The second offering, which promises a “luxury suite experience one seat at a time,” is the 74-seat Club Suite, which is four luxury boxes combined into one. The $700 price includes food and beverages (alcohol is extra), preferred parking and concierge service.

But let's not forget the real high-rollers.

Of the 47 luxury suites available at the new ballpark, 29 have been leased, for between $600,000 and $850,000.

Great. Taking your family to a Yank game? Expect to pay the monthly mortgage on a house in Syracuse.

Read the economist, Andrew Zimbalist, and you’ll see how stadiums get torn down not because of outdated physical structures, but outdated financial structures.

Luxury seats. That’s all.

We’re abandoning the greatest shrine in sports so that the Pruits of South Hampton won’t get yelled on.

It’s as if they tore down the Louvre to build a movie multiplex… and then constantly tell us how lucky we are!

Well, it’s going to be harder to swallow in the House that Greed Built, when every game becomes the Republican National Convention.

We are sooooo going to hate this new stadium…