Yankee Execs On The Hot Seat?

In what may be a bit of welcoming news for many Yankee fans, Yankee COO Lonn Trost and President Randy Levine may be fired over the new Yankee Stadium ticket pricing fiasco [1050AM ESPN]. They may end up being the fall guys for the swaths of empty seats at the new Yankee Stadium.

Now in their third home stand of the year, Yankees are still not selling out their games [NY Times]. They drew only 43,856 for last night's game against the Twins on a warm Friday night in May. Compared to last season, the Yankees drew over 52,000 fans for a Friday night May game against the Mariners.

I know a lot has been made over the swaths of empty seats at in the premium seats behind homeplate and the dugouts. But the truth is that even the non-premium seats are not selling well at all. More than 75% of the empty seats for the games are actually the non-premium seats, which means that the brilliant genius of Lonn Trost and Randy Levine has priced out both the average joe and the super rich joe. Simply put, they screwed up royally.

Solution to obstructed bleacher seats @ Yankee Stadium?

Another article about the obstructed bleacher seats at the New Yankee Stadium. Ross Sheingold opined that they should consider tearing it down and rebuilding it,

Ross Sheingold, who runs the New Stadium Insider blog, said by e-mail that the Yankees, not the Mohegan Sun, were to blame. “The Yankees are likely too stubborn to do this,” he wrote, “but it might not be a bad idea to tear the sports bar down and go back to the drawing board.”

Randy Levine, the Yankees’ president, said, “I don’t think so,” when asked if the team would take those 1,048 seats out of circulation, paint them black and expand the batter’s eye.

Personally, I think it's a great idea to tear it down and rebuild it so that there are no obstructed bleacher views. What they could have done is to slope the tinted windows in the same exact angle as the bleacher seats so that you can look from left field to right w/out any obstructions. It's a simple solution with the only casualty being the inside of the bar, which would have been more cramped and/or intimate, depending on your perspective. [NY Times]