The Futility Infielder

This weekend, the New York Daily News broke the story that the Yankees are near an agreement with local officials that would give the Bombers a new home in the Bronx -- just north of the current stadium -- in time for Opening Day 2009. The new ballpark will hearken back to the original House that Ruth Built, according to the News:

• The stadium will be comprised of two separate structures: one, the exterior wall, constructed to replicate the original Yankee Stadium, built in 1923, and the other the interior stadium itself, rising over the top of the exterior. From the outside the structures will look like one building, almost identical in materials and design to the original stadium. There will be a "great hall" between the exterior wall and the interior structure, featuring five to six times more retail square footage than the current stadium.

• The signature frieze, the lattice work that once rimmed the original stadium roof and was recreated in the outfield of the current stadium, will be added to the new stadium's roof. The frieze (commonly but incorrectly known as "the facade") was painted white during the 1960s, as it now appears above the outfield. But the new stadium will return to the original copper.

Of course it sounds wonderful, but what's the price tag? It's actually not too bad for the taxpayers, as stadium deals go:

• the stadium itself is funded by the team to the tune of $800 million

• the city and state will pitch in $300 million for a new commuter rail stop, waterfront parkland, and better parking facilities, which they will control, "a cash cow for taxpayers," according to the article.

In keeping with the trend of new parks that's swept the majors over the past two decades, the new stadium will have a smaller seating capacity (50,800) than the one it's replacing (57,748), with plenty of luxury suites (50 to 60) for corporate clientele. That smaller capacity is sure to drive up demand for a team whose attendance set a team record last year with 3,775,292 spectators, probably pulling the team's ticket price much closer to that of the Red Sox, the majors' most expensive ticket by a wide margin.

Neil deMause, who's co-written the definitive book on stadium building (Field of Schemes) and keeps abreast of developments in that department with a blog of the same name as well as occasional articles for Baseball Prospectus, notes that while the current park features 30,000 seats in the upper deck and 20,00 below, the new stadium will reverse that:

Since it's nearly impossible to fit 30,000 seats on a single deck without resorting to Woodrow Wilson-era seat widths, presumably this counts all the luxury and club-seat levels as "lower-deck" -- which means the cheap seats in the upper deck would effectively be cut by more than a third.

Furthermore, deMause frets that the close-to-the-action upper decks -- where I sit, and my favorite view of the park -- will doubtless be more distant in the new venue. Hmmmmm...

In one of his BP articles, deMause pointed out that with the $800 million the Yankees are kicking in, the team is exploiting a major loophole in MLB rules:

According to Article XXIV, Section a(5) of the 2002 collective bargaining agreement, teams must make revenue-sharing payments on all baseball revenue, but can deduct "the 'Stadium Operations Expenses' of each Club, as reported on an annual basis in the Club's FIQ [Financial Information Questionnaire]."

That's all it says. But according to baseball sources, teams have been quietly allowed to count stadium construction debt as "stadium operations expenses," thus claiming it as a deduction against revenue sharing.

A few moments with a calculator -- and a copy of Andrew Zimbalist's May the Best Team Win, which lays out the details of the new revenue-sharing plan starting on page 99 -- reveals the impact of this clause on George Steinbrenner's stadium plans. The Yankees currently pay a marginal revenue-sharing rate of about 39% of local revenue. (Low-revenue teams, interestingly, pay an even higher marginal rate, which may help explain why teams like the Twins are seemingly so disinterested in such aspects of the business as, oh, selling tickets.) Taking a deduction for $40 million a year in stadium bond payments would thus earn the Yankees a $15.6 million-a-year write-off on their annual revenue-sharing obligations. Over time, about $300 million of the House That George Built would be paid for by the other 29 teams.

In other words, the Yanks would be able to reap the benefits of the revenue-sharing money -- $48.8 million for 2003, over $60 million last year -- that they've been kicking in to the other teams.

I have to admit mixed feelings about the proposed park. On the one hand, the little kid inside of me would love to see the new park, and I applaud the team's desire to create something which connects fully with the team's rich history. On the other hand, I'll be sad to see the current stadium, which is as hallowed a parcel of land as any in the world of sports, with a connection to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Reggie Jackson and other Yankee greats, fall by the wayside. I'm fearful that the smaller capacity will drive up costs to customers and make the crowds more exclusive and less diverse. The stereotyping of Yankee fans as some faceless corporate class simply isn't true; go to any game and sit somewhere besides the field boxes and you'll get a rainbow of people that's as colorful as on any city subway car.

Furthermore, I'm wary of the trend that has turned baseball's stadiums into mallparks. The current Yankee Stadium, which was renovated in 1974-75, is somewhat spartan in its facilities by comparison to the Jacobs Fields and Camden Yardses. If you're there, you're there to sit on your ass and watch a damn ballgame, not to wander the concourses on a shopping spree or, God forbid, take a dip in some centerfield wading pool like you can at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix. While the post-renovation park lacks the grandeur of the original, it's refreshingly bullshit-free compared to most other venues.

One thing I detest about Milwaukee's Miller Park, which I've visited several times, is the way pumped-in sound surrounds you anywhere you sit. While Yankee Stadium hasn't been able to avoid the canned music craze that's swept ballparks over the past two decades, at least all of the sound comes from that pillar of speakers in centerfield. The antiquated sonic delivery system makes p.a. announcer Bob Sheppard's booming voice sound like the proclamation of a deity from high on the mount: "Now batting, Der-ek... Je-Ter!"

In any event, the plan's nuts and bolts have yet to receive a public airing, something that will happen once the team and the city complete their "memo of understanding" and free the details from the exclusive control of the Yankee PR machine. The team claims that there's "no significant opposition" to the plan, but you can bet a few wrenches will be thrown into the works before too long.

• • •

On the subject of Yankee dollars, the latest Forbes,com annual evaluation of MLB's finances -- essential reading -- has been up for a couple of weeks. Forbes' independent audits value the Yankee franchise at a whopping $950 million, nearly 70 percent more than the number two team, the Boston Red Sox. That value is up 14 percent over last year, outpacing the "huge rally" which baseball finances had this past year. According to Forbes:

• attendance was up 8 percent last year

• sponsorship revenue rose 13 percent

• the average operating income of teams was $4.4 million, the first time in three years it's been in the black and the highest since Forbes started tracking team finances seven years ago.

Forbes points out the way that Yankee and Red Sox dollars are driving the game's economy:

The Yankees and Red Sox are often maligned by the other owners for bloated payrolls. Rivals should pay homage instead: The two teams contributed 39% of the $261 million transferred to low-revenue teams as part of baseball's revenue-sharing plan. Also, attendance was higher (Yankees, 34%; Red Sox, 18%) when these teams visited other cities. The Yankees and Red Sox accounted for 47% of the merchandise revenues shared among all teams. While the rest of the league earned $180 million, the Yankees and Red Sox lost a combined $48 million last year. But so what? The owners use their teams largely as loss leaders for their sports channels.

On a side note, I do believe they've reversed the data in the columns following that paragraph, because the Yanks paid more in revenue sharing and luxury tax (a combined $85 mil) than the Sox ($45 mil) and produced a higher road attendance.

Anyway, there are plenty of nuggets to be found amid Forbes' report, and I can't recommend checking it out enough. If you're a consumer of major league baseball, you ought to be an educated one, period.