Now We Know the Number

The cost of tearing down baseball's One True Cathedral has been quantified.

In his "Please Stop Calling Me a Miser" interview in yesterday's NY Post, Hal Steinbrenner was quoted as saying:

"One of the problems with this narrative is, I hear everything about our revenues, and hear nothing about our costs. I hear nothing about the gargantuan debt service payment that we have to pay every year [about $90 million]."

So there you have it.  Because he was goaded by ex-NYC official Randy Levine into tearing down a long-ago paid off shrine, the following has resulted:

• The Yankees have $90MM less in operating capital each year to fund essential items such as uncontaminated concession food, reduced ticket prices, and ... there was one other thing ... shoot ... wait ... it's right on the tip of my tongue....  oh, that's right: The Yankees could also use the extra $90MM per year to fund PLAYER SALARIES.
  

• We also lost our towering home field advantage which came, in part, from the wall of noise that poured down from seats seemingly on top of the players.  Anyone who ever walked up those steep, tiny upper-deck steps, clutching the railing the whole way, knew the meaning of the words "nose-bleed seats".  But, boy oh boy, when you turned around and looked out at the view in front of you, it was overwhelming.  The Bronx Courthouse off in the distance, the majestic expanse of green, and your heroes looking like they were just a few feet away.
  
  
• We also lost a direct, continuous link back to 1923, back to the best teams in history, back to all that matters in baseball.  I never sat in the upper deck and looked out at the Bronx Courthouse without thinking of Lou Gehrig's "luckiest man on the face of the earth" speech, even though it was delivered long before I was.
  
  
  
  Curt Schilling is a completely disagreeable blowhard, but his description of a palpable "mystique and aura" in the old place was spot-on.  We gave that up AND we're paying $90MM per year for the privilege.

With an extra $90MM kicking around our coffers each year, don't you think we'd already have Bryce Harper on the team?  And maybe a front-of-the-rotation starter and maybe $40MM to spare?  With that extra money, maybe the concession managers could purchase disease-free hot dogs made from the meat of actual animals.  And we'd be playing in the old stadium.  Wouldn't that be a treat?

In October, Duque tapped out a trenchant analysis of how the new building is killing us:

The short right field porch and the bandbox, homer-haven dimensions of Yankee Stadium undercut our ability to field a well-rounded team. It's been nearly 10 years in the new park, and aside from 2009, with the free agent infusion, what have we seen? Team after team of power-drunk whiffers, guys who notch 25 HRs by flicking at mistakes, and who are incapable of bunting to beat the over-shift. Meanwhile, our pitchers get pounded, as fly balls leave the park. I just looked it up: In the nine years of the new ballpark, only one Yankee starter with more than 150 innings has compiled an ERA of under 3.00. (Luis Severino, in 2017, with 2.98 - a stat that cruelly reveals his downward slide.)  You can homer your way through a regular season. Come October, when the best staffs are distilled, pitching always wins, and in this new park, we never seem to have it.

We had a gem of a park that served us well and provided a material home-field advantage for 85 years.  Because it was paid off long ago, it cost the owners nothing other than out-of-pocket operating costs which would be more or less constant for any stadium.  And we took on a crippling -- "gargantuan" in Hal's words -- $90,000,000 per year debt service obligation to build the Mall of America across the street.

I'll say it again: The new stadium reduces the amount of money we have for player salaries by $90MM per year.

There is no doubt in my mind that Randy Levine, New York City's Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, Planning and Administration from 1997 to 2000, orchestrated all this.  He left his position with the city to become President of the New York Yankees.  Levine's head was aswirl in a cloud of do-gooder ideas about economics, development, and planning.  Unfortunately for Yankee fans, the new stadium was one of those initiatives where the principal purpose was to boost the egos of the participants versus accomplishing anything useful.

Yes!  We'll build a new stadium!  We'll create jobs!  We'll have more corporate boxes!  We'll get some of the guys together and put on a show!  We can rip up under-performing 85-year old season ticket plans that have been lovingly handed down from father to son to grandson to great-grandson and replace them with cushiony-soft upholstered Legends and MVP seats and charge people $2,000 per game.



Who cares if no one sits in them?  We don't need crowd noise!  We'll have revenues! Think about it, Hal!  Since the grounds will no longer be hallowed, we can rent them out to soccer teams!

Then they sat down at a mahogany table in a midtown law firm and Randy L. directed the proceedings:

And, now, Hal, sign on this line.  Yes, right here.  And now, on this one.  Aaannnnnd, finally, your initials here.

What?  What is the $90MM per year figure?  Well that's what the bankers are calling a "debt service".  One of those comes with every new stadium they're building these days.  Every team pays a "debt service".  It's one of those nettlesome amounts we couldn't lay off on the taxpayers.  Think of it as a rounding error in the grander scheme of things.

During Randy Levine's tenure, the Red Sox have enjoyed the benefits of:

• Fans who sit in seats they purchase.
  
  
• Playing in a park that provides a distinct home field advantage.
  
  
• The absence of a $90MM per year debt service because their stadium was paid off
  long, long ago.
  
  
• Three World Championships.

Here's the worst part: What's done is done.  We can't unfry the egg.  We're stuck in a new building that looks like everyone else's, gives us no home-field advantage and, to Duque's point, presents some serious disadvantages for the home team. 

And it's all going to divert $90MM per year from the funds available for player salaries until it's paid off!  What fun!

Hal didn't share with the NY Post the number of years remaining on the promissory note but that's just another thing for fans to think about while they enjoy a hot dog made of sheep "casings", chicken "trimmings", eyelids, recta, and yesterday's shredded newspaper while washing it all down with a delicious $15 beer.

What we've had for the past 10 years is what we should expect going forward: $90MM leaks out of the Yankee coffers each year to fund someone's economic development fantasy of a decade ago.

90.  Million.  Dollars.  Per.  Year.

An easy way to avoid this "gargantuan" cost would be to sell the team.  Makes sense, Ziggy?