"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.