A Photo Tour Of The Area Surrounding The New Yankee Stadium

Instead of being like most of the other blogs out there, we're going to link to the original source of these photos instead of just hotlinking them, even though it is a Red Sox blog. Let this be a lesson in doing the right thing, fellow Yankee bloggers.

Taking a bunch of photos in the areas surrounding the new stadium is actually a great idea - and anyone could have done it! (Why didn't we think of this?) Anyway, since it has already been done, we might as well enjoy the photos.

Just like the guy from "A Red Sox Fan From Pinstripe Territory," we are surprised at how little walking room there is around the new stadium. From the original drawings and renderings, it appeared that there would be a ton of space to mill around outside the stadium. This photo suggests otherwise:



Finally, we'll leave you with this photo of the new turnstyles that the Yankees will be utilizing. It is worth posting because it is so damn modern:



Everything about this stadium is the polar opposite of the old, decrepit one. Simply awesome.

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Some pictures to look at over the weekend...

I'm out of town this weekend, but on the road up to the hated land of New England, I was able to snap some crappy cell phone pictures of the new stadium, the old stadium and some new parking garages being built. All of these photos were taken from the Major Deegan expressway heading North toward the NY State Thruway:







Don't worry, there was plenty of traffic on the Deegan, so the car was at a standstill when these photos were taken. The new parking garages look as nice as new parking garages can look. Without much infrastructure change to the roads in the vicinity, I would still recommend public transportation, no matter how many fancy new parking garages pop up. There is a still a LOT of construction in the area, so expect traffic conditions to be just as bad as the past couple of season while the new stadium was being built.

On another topic, I received a call from the Yankee ticket office today. Apparently my name was up for the B plan casualty list, and they were ready to offer me a B Plan. Unfortunately, they only offered me the $85 seats in the 100's section, or the $50 seats in the 230's section in left field. My seniority is 2005 and I used to have the B Plan in Section 1, Row M. In light of these poor choices that I obviously declined, I will have to deal with no opening day, no Old Timers Day, and no playoff guarantee. At this point, I am completely out of options.

I was also informed by the folks in the actual Yankee ticket office that an outside agency handled the ENTIRE relocation procedure, and they were just there to help disseminate the information, which really surprised me (in a bad way).

I used the opportunity to voice my frustration that I never received a calling giving me the heads up that full season upgrades were happening at a rapid pace which would have at least given me a chance to THINK about becoming a ticket broker and upgrading to full (although I had no plans to do so. Receiving this type of courtesy call would have been the right thing.

Oh well. 20 game plan #1 here I come!


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Jorge Posada LAUGHS at your lo-def stadium video screens

(Photo: WCBS 880)

Pictured above is a video test being administered on Thursday, January 29 inside of the new Yankee Stadium. As you can tell, that screen is huge. If it looks this great in photos, I can only imagine how impressive it is when you are at the game. As River Ave Blues noted earlier this week, don't expect to see in-game replays of controversial plays on that mammoth 58 by 103 foot screen - it is against MLB rules.

Be sure to check out all of the rest of the photos that WCBS 880 shot from inside of the stadium. There are even some photos from inside of John and Suzyn's radio booth, but we'll let the guys over at It Is High... cover that one!

For a change, the eye in the sky, Tom Kaminski is NOT responsible for these photos. We can only assume he is up there, watching like a hawk, waiting to snap some more impressive aerial photos.

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Johnny Rockets at the new Stadium - but will the new vendors sing?

I remember the first time I was dragged into a Johnny Rockets "retro diner." It only took a few minutes of waiting for a table before the waiters started singing and dancing to decrepit jukebox hits. I almost walked out - but then I saw the awesome pop-up straw dispensers, I saw the waiter pouring the ketchup into a little paper container to dip the deliciously greasy fries in and I saw the thick milkshakes in old-school milkshake glasses. NOW my interest was piqued. A few minutes later I was sitting at a booth and the waiter dropped a nickel. Thats when instinct kicked in - I had a sudden urge to drop that nickel into the juke box and play 1961 hit Lets Twist Again by Chubby Checker. One of the first things I bought when I had my own apartment in college was that straw-holding apparatus. I still have it to this day, and I don't think I've used a straw from it, but it is awesome and I'll never get rid of it, no matter how dusty it gets.
So anyway, about the New Yankee Stadium - it is going to have vendor locations sponsored by Johnny Rockets, presumably serving staples from their menu, but definitely serving hot dogs. No word yet on singing waiters, although I assume A-Rod would be a fan (not sure if that is a gay joke, or a Madonna joke, or an A-Rod sucks joke, but when all else fails, mention A-Rod).

No, I'm not high - the proof is in the pictures:


Thanks to "Jovial Cow" on the "Something Awful" forums for the blurry, lo-res camera phone shot. I assume the cows that will be slayed to service this food establishment won't be so jovial.

There you have it - Johnny Rockets at Yankee Stadium. Need I say more?

Update: It was just brought to my attention that Citifield over in Flushing is going to be featuring burgers from Danny Meyer's shake shack. In case you have never tried a shake shack burger, you don't know what you are missing. That burger along is worth the trip to the Mets' new stadium.

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Some new photos from inside of the new Stadium

Check out these photos of the new Stadium by KEVINF279 on Shutterfly.com. The slideshow is worth flipping through the 160 photos. My favorite is the photo below - I liked it enough that it inspired the banner at the top of the page! Thanks to KEVINF279 for the photo!



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The new Yankee Stadium covered in snow...

Those wily characters at wcbs880.com are up to it again - posting awesome shots of the new Yankee Stadium from Tom Kaminski's chopper 880:


Photo: Tom Kaminski/ WCBS 880


Photo: Tom Kaminski/ WCBS 880

Not to be outdone, Kaybli took this photo in the OLD Yankee Stadium:




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New Yankee Stadium Construction set to conclude on 2/17/09

There is a GREAT article on Yankees.com about the New Yankee Stadium today, and I recommend it to any baseball fan. Many nuggets within this article (none of which pertaining to tickets or relocation packages). Here are the highlights:

And around the construction site, many of the upbeat workers are wearing dark blue buttons with the name of the famous ballpark in white capital letters set above this date: Feb. 17, 2009, less than two months before Opening Day.

"That's when we're turning the stadium over to the Yankees," said Harry Olsen, the project manager for the company that's overseeing the construction and site.

Pretty cool to have a completion date! Right around pitchers and catchers next year, the New Yankee Stadium will be complete.

Every seat in the new Yankee Stadium will have a full view of home plate. (Stephen Chernin/AP)

It will seat 53,000, but somehow, as MLB.com learned on a recent tour that traversed almost every nook and cranny of the new facility, every one of those seats has an unencumbered view of home plate, even though the new stadium reaches about the same height as the existing one.

Most are much closer to the field than the current stadium, where the catcher squats about 70 feet from the backstop. In the new park, that distance will be about 50 feet. The grade, which seems nearly flat at 35 percent in the current lower deck, has been changed to a much steeper 45 percent. That's akin to a pitcher peering down from a mound 10 feet above the ground, as opposed to a mound that's about six feet high. There are also many fewer rows in each deck.

All of the above is some good news for the people who sit in the main reserved in the outfield and wonder why they are paying way more than most of the people in the Stadium, but get a worse view.

It is airy and open. The congestion in the concourses and the problems of ingress and egress in the current stadium will be left in the past.

You had me at airy and open. I'm sick of being molested when attempting to exit the current "Cathedral" (appropriate nickname for all of the wrong reasons?)

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How appropriate - a look "inside" the new Yankee Stadium

You get it? Because this site is called NYY Stadium Insider? Never mind.

The photo above is taken from inside of the new Yankee Stadium and was sent out by the New York Yankees. If I had to guess, it appears that Big Stein is standing around where home plate would be. The photo offers a good look at how the seats are arranged, height of the decks, etc. Its going to be really exciting when they start laying the turf for the field!


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Some NYY Stadium Insider Exclusive Yankee Stadium Construction Pictures

We don't have impressive inside of the stadium shots as seen on many other blogs, but we have this perfect-for-wallpaper shot below:



Click here to be taken to a page with a few more shots.

The new stadium is REALLY coming along nicely. It is amazing seeing how fast it went from an empty lot of dirt to a stadium!

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