Empty seats mar Yankee victory

Before CC Sabathia completed his eight-inning gem and before Mariano Rivera threw his his 122nd inning of postseason baseball, a strange situation unfolded during last night’s ballgame in the Bronx. The Yankees had announced the attendance for the ALCS home opener and, remarkably, the recorded crowd of 49,688—while rather large—was not a sell-out audience. Given that the new Stadium seats a grand total of 52,325 fans, nearly 2,700 seats went unfilled despite the fact that October baseball had once again fully captivated the city.

Pete Abraham tweeted such while the game was in progress and, about 2 hours later, like clockwork, the Yankees announced that the game had, indeed, sold out, though not everyone—apparently close to 2,700 fans—who purchased tickets had shown up. The turnstiles, according to the Yankees, were simply not spinning in the Bronx.

To be honest, I find it hard to believe that such a large contingency of fans would fail to attend Game 1 of the ALCS. Yes, it was a frigid and damp night with more rain in the forecast, but it was also a night that featured CC Sabathia versus John Lackey—a marquee matchup. Still, 49,688 was the best that we—the pinstriped faithful—could manage. Is this at all believable?

I really don’t think so. In fact, I would not put it past the Yankees to actually embellish their ticket sales or purchase their own available tickets, last minute, in order to avoid a possible PR nightmare. Record companies engage in similar practices in order to inflate underwhelming album sales, especially when an album’s sales fail to meet high expectations. Is it really that far fetched to assume that the Yankees are involved in a similar system of self-promotion? Again, I think it’s naive to rule this out entirely. The discrepancy between 49,688 and 52,325 is too large to accept without at least some level of even the most cursory questioning. Remember, this wasn’t a Royals-Yankees game—this was the team’s most important game of the year, thus far.

However, though these ticket dilemmas are, indeed, problematic, this is not the central issue at hand. The central issue is that the Yankees are essentially saying, “It’s not our fault. We sold the tickets—all of them—the fans just didn’t materialize.” The blame for this seating situation is not necessarily projected on to the fans—that’s not what I’m saying, really—rather, it is deflected from the Yankees and their organization. They fail to hold themselves accountable for creating a contemporary caste system within a ballpark. Instead of purchasing their own tickets or merely fudging the numbers in order to avoid embarrassing headlines, perhaps they should further examine the culture they have created in regards to the new Yankee Stadium.

As Jeff Passan noted earlier today, ever since the beginning of the season, “the message was obvious to every proletariat Yankees fan: The new stadium was the domain of kings, and peasants need not bother.” Even the most average Yankee fans, Passan continues, despite their undying dedication for CC Sabathia and Derek Jeter, “are now conditioned to believe they can’t afford a ticket.” For proof of this, Passan points to $101 tickets that are still available for today’s game. Instead of blaming the team’s fans for this absurd availability, which I’ve seen occur, perhaps the Yankees are the ones who should shoulder the blame. It is ultimately their fault if the fans, under the impression that the Stadium will not accommodate those with lighter wallets, have simply stopped trying to purchase tickets for the ALCS—the Yankees most important series of the year.

In the end, last night’s victory was a beautiful one for the Yankees, the city, and their followers. Sadly, witnessing such an event continues to be fairly limited and, although I can watch the games from the privacy of my home and at relatively no cost, I’m still forced to see dozens of empty blue seats behind Mark Teixeira as he robs Torii Hunter of a single. Each empty seat serves as a very public reminder that this is an expensive affair, one that many simply cannot afford access to regardless of their fandom. So, even though the Yankees claim to have sold every available ticket at Yankee Stadium—a claim that I cannot bring myself to fully believe—those empty seats showcased on FOX loom large and will continue to do so throughout October (and into November).

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