The Yankees made a big deal out of their decision to hold ticket prices steady for the first round of the playoffs. That’s right, even those $5 seats in the center-field bleachers with obstructed views of the field would remain $5 when the Yankees play either the Detroit Tigers or the Minnesota Twins next week.
But unless you are a season ticket-holder, forget about that $5 price. Fans selling those bleacher seats on line are charging no less than $98 each for a chance to see about two-thirds of the field, according to FanSnap, a Web site that scans dozens of ticket resellers.
Raise your hand if you were counting on purchasing a Yankees playoff ticket for $5. Okay, now keep it in the air, clench your fingers into a fist and punch yourself in the face.
The Yankees made a big deal of the pricing structure for the P.R. boost after all the negative press over their ticket pricing for the regular season. This year, as has been the case ever since the Yanks went on their dynastic run, there only a precious few postseason tickets available to the general public. A few weeks back, Ross from New Stadium Insider did some quick calculations and estimated the amount of available tickets for each round of the postseason to be:
ALDS: 4,735 ALCS: 3,235 WS: 735
It doesn't take a mathematician to decipher that, unless you are a season ticket holder, you are going to be paying through to nose to observe some playoff baseball in the Bronx.
The Mets and the Yankees together have spent more than $2 billion on new stadiums partly to bring fans much closer to the action. But that access comes at a cost. For the best views, fans will have to pay eye-popping prices to sit on the field level and in the decks behind home plate in seats angled toward the infield.
Fans on tighter budgets, though, will have to settle for seats in far-off sections, some of which have obstructed views of the field.
Here is the part that kills me though (emphasis mine):
Mets fans learned this the hard way on Sunday, when St. John’s and Georgetown played the first game at Citi Field. Steven Gottesman, who has a 15-game ticket plan, went to see his four seats in Section 533, Row 15, near the top of the upper deck down the left-field line. To his “shock and horror,” he could not see the warning track or about 20 feet of the outfield from the left-field line to center field.
Dude, Steven. You bought tickets in Section 533, "near the top of the upper deck". What the fuck did you expect? Have you even been to a ballpark before? A lot of the seats in the upper deck in every park have slightly obstructed views. "Shock and horror" is what you feel when you find a dead body checking into your hotel room, not when the seats for your 15 game package IN SECTION 533 don't have a view of 20 feet of the fucking outfield.
“In other words, I will only know if a home run is hit if I am listening to a radio at the game or I wait to see the sign from the umpire,” Gottesman, 45, said in an e-mail message.
Wow, this guy really has never been to a baseball game before. Steve, if you are unsure if a home run was just hit, ask yourself a few simple questions:
How is the crowd reacting?
A roaring cheer?
A collective sigh?
Okay, what team is batting?
Is the batter rounding the bases?
Did the outfielder throw the ball back into the infield?
Are fans of either team high-fiving each other nearby?
Does the pitcher look like he just got punched in the stomach?
How have I not figured this out by now?
Will I ever get this eight precious seconds of my life back?
Gottesman added: “If Endy Chávez made his catch in this new stadium and I had been there, I would not have seen it.”
No, you might not have theoretically seen it (leaving aside the fact that this is a different park), but you would have experienced the rest of Shea Stadium going absolutley out of their minds. You know where you could have viewed it perfectly? At home on your HDTV.
You don't go to a game to see every single thing that happens, Steve. You go to take in the atmopshere, and to say that you were there when it occurred. I was at a game in 2005 where Bernie Williams hit a walk off 2 run HR in the bottom 11th inning into the short porch in right. I was in the right field upper deck and couldnt see it acutally leave the park, but I knew about two thirds of a second after it happened. If you were at Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS and had your view obscured, do you really think you'd be bitching about the fact that you couldn't see that one play?
Steve, if you are reading (doubtful), stop being a douche and sell your tickets to someone who might actually appreciate being at the game. I'm not even a Mets fan and I'd buy a few.
I know lots of people were up in arms about the obstructed view bleacher seats at The New Yankee Stadium when they were still being sold for full price. Now they are $5, and I really can't think of a better value in all of sports, and possibly all of life.
Here is a short list of other things that cost $5:
Half of a shitty beer at the New Stadium
A pint of shitty light beer elsewhere in the city
Two slices at Freddie & Pepper's (one cheese and one white slice with broccoli, zucchini and ricotta on whole wheat crust or a buffalo chicken with cross-checked bleu cheese)
A foot-long sandwich from Subway
Two Olde English 40oz (paper bags included)
Roughly 12 cigarettes
A 10 block cab ride with tip (estimated)
A shoe shine (plus tip)
2 1/2 subway rides
A small frozen yogurt at Pinkberry with three toppings
The Sunday NYT
One share of GE stock, 2 shares of GM, or 3 1/3 of CitiGroup
I'd rather have a ticket to a Yankee game at the New Stadium than any three of those, regardless of how bad the view is. Well, depending on how the scratch-off turned out, I might have to take that plus two shots of Jameson.
Last year, our Saturday Package was about $330, for Tier Reserved Section 7 Row M. That put us between home and first, with a view of the whole field, but pretty far up there. Not exactly a location that was going to impress anyone, but there was a bathroom and a beer dispensary right at the entrance to our section. That's only 13 games, though.
Yes, the seats are obstructed view, but unlike the Old Stadium, you aren't sequestered like you are in a leper colony in out centerfield. You have access to the rest of the park, and although you can't take beers back to your seat, you can certainly drink them walking around.
It's basically a Standing Room Only ticket. Back when the Beacon Theater wasn't owned by MSG/Cablevision and diabolically corporatized, they used to have SRO tix for the mezzanine level. The sound was 100 times better than the balcony, and who cares if you don't have your own seat? Sitting down at a concert in not in my playbook.
Granted, standing for an entire baseball game would kind of suck, but if that picture above is anywhere near accurate you'll be able to see everything except left-center and over. I can live with that. Plus, you can always watch on the monitors on the side of the sports bar. It's better than your couch, right? Hell, you can just go in the sports bar.
After the initial rush of everyone wanting to get out to the Stadium for the first time, you are going to be able to spot some empties in the upper deck and park it there for a while too. And of course, I'll try to sneak into better seats than that and document the escapades for this here cyberblogsite.
I don't know how gestapo-like the security is going to be at The Structure That Mariano Rivera Erected, but the concourses are supposed to be more open and have better views of the field. I wouldn't mind crusing around, sipping on a really expensive beer (or ginger ale I spiked with my flask of Johnny Red) and taking in the different vantage points. I can understand if you wouldn't do it because are older or have kids, that sounds like a pretty fantastic deal to me.
Just to recap, you could (theoretically) get full season tickets for the New Yankee Stadium for $75 more than we paid for our Saturday package last year. If I wanted to wait on hold for an hour and then be told to go fuck myself, I'd look into this right now.
All I wanna know is... Who's coming with me?
Jan, thank you Jan!
[Sorry, but that abomination was the only version I could find.God, I don't know why the fuck that person felt the need to remix, edit and thereby bastardize such a brilliant cinematic moment, but I'll bet you anything Jim Bruer would like to stub his joint out in their eye]
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