New Yankee Stadium Out of this World

First appeared on April 22nd, 2009
in The Lebanon Reporter

For many years I grew up thinking that New York was the capital of the Material World. To me New Yorkers fancied the best of everything and were in fact, when reduced to the least common denominator, nothing more than knuckle dragging apes beating their way through a jungle of concrete and honking horns; all seeking to amass the largest passel of bananas in the band. As I eventually matured however I began to see the folly of my ways and started to understand that New Yorkers are no different than you and me (completely insecure and terrified of house cats). Then they went and built the new Yankee Stadium.
Perhaps you haven’t heard about the new Yankee Stadium. The house that George built to replace the house that Ruth built? The house that cost $1.5 billion for someone to build? In case you can’t get your arms around $1.5 billion that is over three times the total Gross Domestic Product for the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Compounding things for fans it literally costs more to take a family to one game at the new Yankee Stadium than the average citizen of Zimbabwe earns in an entire year. With 1.5 billion dollars to burn, one would have their choice between building two Lucas Oil Stadium’s or sending two NASA rovers to Mars.
The 1.5 billion dollar price tag is all the more surprising when one considers the original plans called for a budget of $800 million. Of course those who have built a home understand how easy it is for the little things to add up and push you over-budget. A 10 million dollar box of roofing nails here, 250 million dollars worth of wing nuts and electrical wire there.
And just what does $1.5 billion get you these days one might ask? Try higher ticket prices and 6,000 less seats. In building the stadium the Yankees added 450 more suites and doubled the square footage of their on-site retail space; both conveniently arriving in time for the economic down-turn. For those of you looking for a location to host your next banquet or bar mitzvah, you’re in luck too as the stadium has its own conference center. With a grand total of 16, she also boasts more elevators than all the buildings in Boone County combined. If you’re not giggling with awe over this place yet, this Taj Mahal of baseball even has a Hard Rock Café inside it. Need I say more?
But still one must wonder, with everything they changed through building it, what’s with calling it Yankee Stadium again? After spending $1.5 billion you would think the Steinbrenner braintrust could afford to hire someone to come up with a new name. Or why couldn’t they just sell the naming rights like every other money hungry cash cow franchise in professional sports? Apparently the new Yankee Stadium is so top shelf that the opportunity to call it “Microsoft Field” was even too rich for Bill Gates’ blood. In fact, after Gates paid for box seats to a game in the new Yankee Stadium he’d probably need his checkbook to buy a hot dog and foam finger. So the next time I get the impression a New Yorker is staring down their nose at me it will be easier to understand why. It’s not about some silly cultural impasse like the fact that I wear tennis shoes even when it’s not Saturday; it’s more about them being able to build billion dollar sports facilities while we Midwesterners are simply struggling to pay the electric bills in ours.