March 29, 2009

Yanks and Mets preview: Empty seats and pricey beers?

You can't walk past a newsstand in New York &mdash yes, we still have newsstands here, and walking — without seeing a passel of articles hyping the soon-to-be-opening Mets and Yankees stadiums. I've long since given up hope of following it all, but here are some of this weekend's highlights:

• The Newark Star-Ledger is wondering whether the teams will be able to sell all their pricey new seats, with sports marketing consultant David Carter saying ticket-buyers are likely to be more price-conscious during a recession: "For a long time, fans haven't done that kind of assessment. Now they're looking at it that way."
• The Daily News' Bob Raissman, meanwhile, wonders if the Yankees' cable network will show any empty seats on TV. That is, if they ever stop complaining about the lousy camera angles at the new stadium.
• Bucketloads of new Yankees stadium photos keep turning up. Note the $9 beers and $5 bottled water. (You'll still be able to bring your own bottled water into the ballpark, but juice boxes will be at the discretion of security guards.)
• The Times' Richard Sandomir reports that the Mets' goal in reducing seating at Citi Field by 15,000 from Shea Stadium was "stoking demand for far fewer tickets." (Yeah, no duh.) Though Sandomir also buys into the Mets' argument that the new stadium is more "intimate," notwithstanding that it's actually almost as tall as the one it replaced, despite offering 25% fewer seats.

Which brings us to the other contender for dumbest observation of the day:

As for the all-important matter of restrooms, here's what Jeff Gold, a season-ticker holder from Bellmore, N.Y., had to say said when I asked about Citi Field's biggest improvement: "Have you been to the bathrooms here? They're clean and they're huge. It's a first class facility."

As FoS correspondent David Dyte remarked: "And here I was expecting them to pre-age the bathrooms with assorted human waste from local sewers."