Monday, August 28, 2023

"There used to be a ballpark right here." (Or at least across the street.)


With their usual, impeccable timing, your New York Yankees have decided that now—right after the team's worst losing streak in over 40 years—is the moment to announce a 10 percent increase in seat prices for next season.

Why are we not surprised?

Apparently, it's not enough that the Yanks have gouged the City of New York for two new stadiums over the past 50 years. 

Both these parks received enormous subsidies—as, sadly, do all sports arenas in the city and pretty much everyhere else nowadays.

As this 2023 report from the city's Independent Budget Office makes clear, the Yankees pay NOTHING in property taxes on their spanking, sterile, 14-year-old stadium, despite an estimated fair market value of $2.6 billion. 

https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/stadium-subsidies-letter-memo-march-2023.pdf

This should mean $121 million a year for the city. Instead, the Yankees get away with paying PILOTS. No, not the woebegone, one-year Seattle expansion team that Jim Bouton immortalized in 1969, but "Payments in Lieu of Taxes." 

PILOTS are usually a shady proposition, designed mostly to evade paying real taxes. In the case of the Yankees, they are shadier than ever. Instead of paying that $121 million they owe, our favorite ballteam pays PILOTS of $84 million a year to itself, essentially—the money going to pay off the building costs for Yankee Stadium III.

In fairness (just not fairness to us taxpayers), this is par for the park in NYC. NO professional sports teams in the city are so jejune as to fork over tax money for the large, prime-location chunks of real estate they occupy. The Dolans haven't paid property taxes on Madison Square Garden since 1982. 

All in all, according to the estimable Neil deMause, our pro sports teams freeload to a total of $377 million in a year. This in a city that has just raised the mass transit fare again, and instituted congestion pricing on drivers.

https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2023/03/29/19799/nyc-is-handing-out-277m-a-year-in-tax-breaks-to-its-pro-sports-teams/

It's amazing that this still goes on, particularly considering how all of these deadbeats have lost nearly all their old leverage. 

This isn't the 1970s anymore. New York is the richest city in the world, and nobody's building anybody a great new park out in the Meadowlands. If any of these teams were to be suicidal enough to take off for, say, Denver—where the Yankees threatened to move sometime in the '80s or '90s—New York could bring in a new team in about five minutes, and if anyone objected, the city could challenge pro sports' teetering anti-trust status.

Well, hell. Sports teams rip off the city where they play. Not exactly a news story, more along the lines of "dog bites man." Or, dog plotzes on sidewalk, man fails to clean it up.

What's most disheartening is how little we have got for our money.

Let's put aside for a moment the old-world craftsmanship, visible everywhere. By "old world," I mean the Pleistocene, when hominids banged things together with rocks—apparently the technology used to pound all those visible nails through the Stadium roof.

Then there's the fact that YS III seats 46,537 fannies. The O.G. Yankee Stadium—built and paid for entirely by Col. Ruppert, with no property tax exemptions expected or granted—could supposedly hold as many as 82,000, with standing room.







In other words, over the years, the Steinbrenner family has cut over 35,000 people—an entire Fenway Park's worth of fans—out of any chance to seeing the team play. And worse still, is what the ballpark experience has become for those who make it inside. 

As Doug K. outlined in his excellent article the other day, YS III was built, like so many other sports arenas these days, to be an entertainment node, not so much a ballpark. 

Beyond that, I found pretty much every other change made over the past 4 years, since I was there last, to be deleterious.



Just getting into the park is difficult. For me, it was due mostly to my technological dunderheadedness, but there was a long line headed into the office dealing with why our electronic tickets were not working. Even for those who know what they're doing, the line moves at a glacial pace. No more Yankees ticket takers ripping a thousand ducats a minute—and leaving you with a nice souvenir. No more paper tickets at all.

Inside, you can pay $10 for a 176-page "scorecard," stuffed with ads. (And featuring a big piece on that Yankee immortal, Isiah Kiner-Falafel.)

Upstairs, at least, your money's no good—just your credit or bank card. Even the cheap seats no longer accept our federal currency, and if you don't have a card, well, too bad. 

Want to buy a single beer, and drink it from a cup? Fugeddaboutit. You have to buy an insipid beer brand in a great big, 20-ounce can. Most of the better beer brands have been removed, but don't worry! There are now pop-up bars selling hard liquor, all over the place. Kinda makes a mockery of the Stadium warnings not to drive away drunk.

Couldn't find the old kosher hot dog stands—or, for that matter, the vendors. There's waiter-service in the 3,000-dollar seats, but not a vendor to be found in the upper deck. Gone is the great old custom of passing food and money back and forth down a row of fellow fans, so you don't miss a pitch.

The Yankees don't much care if you miss any of the action. They want you up, spending money, sharing all the data to be gleaned from your credit cards and bank accounts.  

Which, come to think of it, is probably a good business strategy. For there sure as hell won't be anything to see on the field for a long time.








 

23 comments:

  1. Sorry about the pix; don't seem to be downloading for some reason.

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  2. This is the biggest series of the season. If they get swept they could be in the top 15 even with losing the 10 spots.

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  3. I'm watching the game using the Detroit broadcast and they showed the batting average box for Stanton. It's the hot/cold one divided into nine sections. Stanton's avg. in what would be the number one box, upper left is... .000 Seriously .000 This is the strike box as in. In the strike zone. The number seven box lower left was .089 doesn't count when he swings at pitches outside the strike zone.

    That's just insanely bad for a professional hitter.

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  4. Yankees have struck out eight times in the first three innings.

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  5. Steinbrenner isn't get a penny from me. The bootleg Yankee hat makers aren't even getting a penny from me, until Cashman is fired and there's a wholesale firing of everyone.

    I know I'm a broken record on this, but so long as people pay money for this national joke of a team, nothing will change. Nothing. Only boycotting the Yankees until their brand stinks, and Yankee market value is sinks, will cause Steinbrenner to take action.

    If I knew of a way to tank his soccer teams, too, I'd be suggesting that.

    Kicking Hal in his wallet is the only way.

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  6. Hoss,

    Great article, as always.

    On the game, I guess Ca$hole will negotiate that $90M 3 year contract for setback now.

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  7. Meaningless game…Judge finally didn’t strikeout…

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  8. Holmes can’t pitch any longer…

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  9. I was thinking last inning that we could still lose this game with another bullpen meltdown.....

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  10. WHAY THE UNHOLY FUCKEDY FUCK FUCK BULLSHITTERY HAS GOTTEN INTO SEVY!!?? DOESN'T HE SEE WHAT WE'RE ROOTIN FOR!!??????

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  11. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WINNY!!!!

    Take your medication, lay down, close you eyes, breathe and repeat the following:

    Every sperm is sacred
    Every sperm is great
    If a sperm is wasted
    God gets quite irate!

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  12. Unwavering positivity =

    Can it possibly get *any* worse?

    YES, it can!

    We are well into the 7th circle of hell.

    Stayed tuned for more disgustingness as we approach the 9th.

    The 9th? Was Dante a Yankees fan? Maybe he converted whilst we had the Cuban Faucet as closer.

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  13. Rufus - are you sipping weekend Martinis on a Monday?

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  14. Thanks, Rufus.

    And SNY is reporting that Boone is probably coming back. Dear Lord.

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  15. If Boone returns then there isn't any place we can go. It will certainly be the end of days. OH MY - I had better get everything in order.

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  16. A/A, great movie!

    Anyone who doesn't think that our Country isn't riff with massive corruption in the guvment, need look no further than the charades that accompany public money being used for building private sports stadiums.

    Lest I forget to mention it, it also speaks loudly at how poorly educated people the populace have been reduced too. This is likely not an accident....

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  17. From Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes:

    “Well, there are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it. (Softly) Sometimes I think it ain't right to stand and watch them do it.”

    We stand around. Hal munches enthusiastically.

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  18. Interesting points, guys.

    As for people's education, we have only ourselves to blame. Education since WW II has vastly expanded, and become more accessible than ever before. I fear we don't care much about learning things of worth—or, beyond that, simply paying attention.

    When it comes to government corruption in general, I think the worst thing we've done is to make so much of what is really bribery, legal. Jack Beatty makes that point in his excellent book about James Michael Curley, The Rascal King. He claims that back in the day, it was very, very hard to nail political machines on corruption. But if you got the goods on them, you could nab them.

    Now, all kinds of what should be illicit campaign contributions are legal. And in several recent decisions, the Supreme Court has made bribery charges all but impossible to prove...

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  19. As for sports arenas, as late as the 1950s, even NYC's very corrupt government wouldn't bit on building parks for O'Malley and Stoneham, though Walter obligingly pointed out a loophole in federal, slum clearance programs they could have used.

    That sort of expenditure was just considered too outrageous.

    What changed? I think the 1970s, when all these cities felt the whole idea of cities was dying in America. They were desperate to keep anything they could.

    I don't necessarily blame them for that fear. But in the intervening 50 YEARS, when cities came back, they should have changed the policy. Instead, we still get these huge handouts.

    A friend of mind who has worked in reform efforts for many years thinks it's due to a sort of soft bribery, in which people like the Dolans quietly employ the relatives of legislators. Don't know if that's true, but it seems like it must be something!

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  20. All thank Randy Levine, ex-Deputy Mayor and chief negotiator for the sweetheart deal the Yankees got from the people of NYC, before he jumped over to the Yankee management side. Exactly the kind of misbehavior that lands you in jail for bribery, in more civilized countries and states.

    Another turd in the Yankee leadership who needs to get flushed.

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