Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Lazy Wednesday Yankee Stadium Link Dump - Vintage Photos, Lower Ticket Prices, Opening Day Coverage, Babe Ruth's Legacy & More

Its Wednesday, and for some reason there are 5 meetings on the Outlook calendar at the day job. That means not much time for original thought here on NSI. Without further ado, here are some interesting Yankee Stadium related links, after the jump.


Via Tuesday's Wall Street Journal comes word that the Yankees are sprinkling Yankee-related vintage photographs estimated to be worth $5 million throughout the new stadium. Lets just hope that some of the photos are hung in the unsightly, industrial corridors that are prevalent in the new digs. Areas like this, and this. Or even this. Thanks to Mets police for those pics, from their "ugly side of new Yankee Stadium" post. Perhaps we were too quick to judge the stadium and there will be some charm after all? We can only hope.

Neil Best of Newsday continues to fight the good fight in the mainstream media, and investigated the possibility of the Yankees actually biting the bullet and lowering ticket prices. Don't get your hopes up, the Yankees would probably just lower the $900 seats to $325. The Yankee seem open-minded about the idea, but this article just contains a bunch of canned economy quotes from Randy Levine. Call us when the Yankees announce a price freeze on the bleacher seats. Yea, right. Those bad boys are $20 per next season - you heard it hear first.

In an article that features long-windedness usually reserved for us here at NSI, Mark Newman of MLB.com gushes about all of the ways that fans can follow the action for Thursday's new Yankee Stadium opener. Apparently there are 5 TV/radio broadcast crews on hand for the festivities, including the MLB Network crew of Bob Costas, Harold Reynolds and the great Jim Kaat. It is a shame that people in the New York market won't have the opportunity to hear that interesting announcing team and will be stuck with John Sterling on the radio and Michael Kay on TV. Why didn't Newman mention the SAP broadcast options? Even without speaking a word of Spanish, taking Robbie Cano's advice and hitting SAP on the remote control is often a better choice than the YES network broadcast - especially when it is featuring the useless "Flash," John Flaherty. What does he bring to the broadcast? Can anyone tell us?

Some reaction to our story about Linda Ruth Tosetti has been filtering in around the interwebs. NBC local's Josh Alper has a syndicated story defending the Yankees' treatment of Ruth's legacy. River Avenue Blues noticed the question we raised in the story about how far down the generational line the Yankees should be forced to cater to the Ruth family's requests. Those stories are pretty well reasoned, but it seems that the general fan reaction in comments, message boards, and other fancy, web 2.0 hubs are adamently against what she believes in. While some of her ideas are a bit over the top, it seems like she genuinely cares about this issue because it affects the every day experience of the fans. Perhaps she is a bit too nostalgic for the old days, but she also raised some great points about access to the players, and how the new stadium was built in the owner's vision of what a baseball stadium should be, and not what the fans think it should be. Also, how could anyone argue about the statue? Meet at the Babe would totally be the new meet at the bat. As we discussed previously, the Yankees are not moving the giant bat over to the new stadium. A statue of Babe Ruth would become the meeting place for Yankee fans. $90,000 is a drop in the bucket for this franchise. They shouldn't do it because Linda Ruth Tosetti told them to. They should do it because it is a damn good idea.

We encourage all readers of NSI to check out The Mets Police. Yes, we know, they cover New York's other baseball team that resides in Flushing, not the #1 franchise in the history of sports. However, they have featured some incredible new Yankee Stadium coverage to go along with their Stadium Insider-esque coverage of the Mets. We recently had a crazy idea about a Stadium Insider Network, and these guys would be first on our list of sites that we would be proud to have as part of that network.

And finally, speaking of our crazy Stadium Insider Network idea, we would like you, our readers to help us out. If you know of any blogs with a similar theme and style to New Stadium Insider, please point us in their direction. In addition to trying to figure out what we want to do with this network idea, we would be sincerely interested in reading the plight of baseball fans in other cities in situations similar to ours. The comments section below is open for all recommendations, even if you are plugging your own site.
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