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Saturday, February 20, 2016

" It’s not that we don’t want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for a ticket and (another) fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it’s frustrating to the purchaser of the full amount … And quite frankly, the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base.”

There it is. The view from Mt. Olympus. The message clear...

The New York Yankees - owned and operated by billionaire siblings - don't want the bootless and unhorsed to ruin the game experience for their super-rich pals.

That's the quote from Lonn Trost - one of the suited Yankee senior vice-somethingorothers, who clog the team's upper masthead the way a disposable diaper does a toilet. He was speaking this week after the Yankees announced a novel new way to screw fans: They will no longer accept print-at-home tickets, which often come from StubHub - at times costing less than the market price. The team says it's fighting ticket fraud, but not everybody believes it.

Insert sigh here.

Listen: I don't want to write about "print-at-home" tickets. WTF? I want to write about rookies and veterans and who'll play 3B if Headley breaks a boner? Besides... the "controversy" here is overblown: StubHub will soon use smart phone tickets, ending the need for print-at-home. And frankly, I grew up in a world when scalpers were arrested, and I still view StubHub as lawyer-hacked, legalized scalping. What bugs me, though, is that apparently the Yankees aren't regulating "the secondary market;" they just want to do the scalping themselves. Hence the anger across the Yankiverse.

The truth is, I stopped going to Yankee games when they tore down their "cathedral" in the name of corporate luxury boxes. Ever since the 2009 World Series, when they shelled out for old George, the Yankee ownership has cynically played its fan base as a bunch of fools. Every winter, Hal Steinbrenner whines about the payroll, as if players were stealing kibble straight from his dog-dish. Folks on social security don't poor-mouth like Hal. And then Lonn Trost pops up to offer his view of letting in the riffraff.

Yesterday, I kicked around on a few fan message boards, trying to understand how Trost could spout such Jay Gouldian crapola. (I have no doubt he thinks it, but how stupid would anybody be to SAY it?) Apparently, some high-cost season tickets include access to food buffets, and when the rich put them up on StubHub, the buyers eat all the chicken-fried lobster. God bless those people. That's what I would do. But the Rockefellers hate it. And Trost identifies more with them than regular fans.

All of this poses a new reason to root for a day of reckoning - one that will never come. The Steinbrenners don't just own a team. They own a chunk of New York City. They own a slice of the American culture. They own The Babe, The Mick, Mariano, Jeter - the memory of Yogi, like the way Koch brothers own Kansas. All they need do is field a team that chases the Wild Card - that's a few games over .500 - and they can literally print money.

Also, they will always have me. I can't help it. I've been a Yankee fan all my life. As the days grow shorter, I'm too old to change. I'll die a Yankee fan, no matter who owns the team.

But this week, I learned something important.

They don't want me in Yankee Stadium. I might use the wrong fork. I might make a rich person uncomfortable. I don't make the cut.

Thank God for the Yankee Radio Network, driven by Cheap. Of course, one of these days, Trost will figure out how to squeeze it to death - maybe they'll have Ivanka Trump do a fashion report during pitching changes. But for all their woes, at least John and Suzyn still want us.

The owners wish all us angry fans just went away.

10 comments:

Local Bargain Jerk said...


Lonn Trost's comments were appalling. The nouveau riche, insecure-with-his-own-status douche bag might as well have said "Let them eat cake."

Almost worse than that, and what the transcription above doesn't show, is that this elitist bastard actually stammered while saying all that, as though he was struggling to find just the right words. The stupid son of a bitch actually seemed like he was going through great pains to be diplomatic.

I hate the four letter words many commenters use on this blog but, frankly, he can go fuck himself. I also wish that I -- a lowly, have-not mendicant -- could say it directly to his fat, fucking face.

I had to look around to find a link to the full Boomer & Carton broadcast. You can listen to it here. When you get to that link, don't click the upper video playback, click the lower one after where it says "Have a listen." The most offensive part starts around the 5:00 minute mark.

Whaddadick.

Guy Grand said...

I just got an idea to surprise the indignant brahmins.

ceeja said...

Give 'em hell El Duque, that's the spirit!!!!
They should have never torn down the first Stadium in 1973. Worst move they ever made.

KD said...

They would rather have empty seats right behind the plate. Hard not to notice all those empty seats, especially when compared to a redsock game in Fenway where the seats are not only sold, there are actually fans sitting in them!

and try to sneak down there in the 8th inning of a blowout, when 80% of fans have already headed home. The Pope and Obama combined don't have such security.

Karl Marx said...

All history is class struggle.

joe disgusted pastry said...

They wrecked The Cathedral in the '70s during those two years we were forced to play in that monstrosity called Shea. The new YS is actually much better, in my opinion, than the remodeled, i.e., destroyed original stadium. Not that it matters to me now. I'm not spending any money to watch the only MLB team that did not bother to sign a free agent. I'm going to CitiField to root for the Nationals and Marlins.

joe disgusted pastry said...

Plus also, doesn't this excuse about preventing "fraud," which rarely happens, remind you of the excuses given for all those laws being passed to make it harder for "undesirables" to vote?

KD said...

I have to say, at least in the new stadium one can actually walk around and watch the game from behind home plate for a while. Also, Bleacher Creatures at the old stadium had their own segregated gate and were prohibited from leaving the bleachers. For several years they weren't even permitted to buy expensive beer. Yet I do miss the old stadium and fans. we used to be a nasty bunch and we hated the redsocks and anyone with the temerity to show up in redsock gear. Nowadays the game seems like a distraction for so many "fans". I must be getting old.

Ken of Brooklyn said...

Among the many reasons, failure of management to give a damn, playing the bloated contracts instead of giving the kids a chance, etc., this is reason NUMERO UNO why I'll not be attending any home games this season. Content I shall be to listen to the sultry sounds of The Master and Suzyn in my VIP barcalounger,,,,

And WOW, amen to all of the above comments, ESPECIALLY LBJ, you 'fucking' nailed it my friend!!!!!!!

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