This week’s Sports Illustrated included an article from its “vault” on Tom Seaver’s 300th victory, for the White Sox at Yankee Stadium in August of 1985. It mentioned 54,032 cheered the conclusion of the event, but even if that many tickets were sold, I promise you there were not that many people in the stadium at the end.
ESPN’s resident Bostonian, Peter Gammons, said here on “Mike & Mike in the Morning” that the new Yankee Stadium is poorly conceived and widely ridiculed.
The Yankees Thursday announced new procedures for batting practice that will allow fans without tickets near the field to get close to it - but not in the Legends Suite. I wasn’t that big on autographs as a kid, and I’m still not. Once I asked Bonnie Bernstein to autograph something at the Super Bowl because as a child she studied at the gymnastics academy my daughter was attending at the time.
OK, one last post on this: In fairness I wanted to offer a complete transcript of the brief exchange at Yankee Stadium Tuesday between a small group of reporters and Yankees COO Lonn Trost regarding the policy of not allowing all fans into the Legends Suite during b.p. His tone was not really angry or defiant, nor was it defensive. I’d say he sounded mostly baffled about why this has become such a big issue.
SNY got funky again Thursday, sending Keith Hernandez around Citi Field to watch the Phils-Mets tilt from various locations, including the restaurant in deep leftfield and next to the home dugout. I understand why some purists don’t like this sort of thing, but I thought it worked well and made me watch what was at the time an apparent blowout longer than I normally would have on a night when “30 Rock” and the imploding Yankees were on. For example, .Hernandez made an interesting, I-never-would-have-thought-of-that point about how as a player he preferred dugouts closer to the plate than the one at Citi so he could better analyze the action
Have a nice little debate going on my Facebook page after praising John Sterling’s call of the A-Rod A-bomb Friday and asserting that for all of his well documented faults, no one is better at a dramatic, over-the-top home run call. Your thoughts?
Oh my goodness gracious. The technical term for this in the journalism business is One Helluva Story.
Toward the end of this video, a Yankees executive urges fans to act quickly if they want to buy into the “scarce” available inventory of premium seats at the new stadium. This was in October. That’s it for me today, people
If you asked me to pick the two sportswriters I would least want to author a critical column about me, I’d go with Selena Roberts and Jason Whitlock. When so moved, each can eviscerate a subject as effectively as anyone in America - whether or not you agree with his or her take.
Kat O’Brien is leaving the Yankees beat - the toughest job in the sports department, always - after two years to further her education at Penn. That is the equivalent of 14 non-baseball sportswriter years, I believe