NEW Yankee Stadium and Pink Floyd

Listening to George Bush last night makes today's topic seem insignificant. Today's post, researched several days ago, will go on as scheduled, as this info is pretty sobering in its own right. So if f you're angry and insulted about the big picture that the president dumped on the country last night, you're not alone. We'll talk about him another day.

The new Yankee Stadium will open across the street from the old one in spring of 2009. It’s all about numbers.

• Cost: $1.3 Billion. That is a “B” for Billion. It is the most expensive stadium ever built—in the USA. Wembley in London cost more for the world title, but they have soccer hooligans to accommodate. Wembley cost 798 million pounds in 2007. That's around $1.43 billion US. There are about 104 Japanese Yen to the dollar, so Wembley would be about 150 billion Yen. Likewise, there's about 11 Mexican pesos to the dollar, which is about .9 Pounds, but they went to the Euro, so let's call it even.
• Luxury Seats: There are 1,800 Luxury Suite seats. Prices start at $500 per game per seat. The most expensive are $2,500 apiece, for the front row, and they are sold out. There are 74 Club Suite seats at $250 apiece. Who the hell is paying this?
• Construction began: August 2006
• Seats: 51,600
• Financing: $220 million from New York City, $1.1 Billion from the New York Yankees, but stay tuned for this part, it's pretty wild.
• Site Planning: NYC gave the NYYankees $3 million back in 1998 for “site planning”. Chump change, barely get you a decent relief pitcher today.
• Public Transportation: there will be a new $91 million transit station built to accommodate fans. If you can afford a ticket to this Taj Ma Baseball, are you likely to use public transportation? Or did you have to sell your car to get a ticket?
• Public Park: how nice! No, how much. The old stadium site will be turned into a park. Renovation of existing parkland, $20 million. Building new park, $150 million. Why so much? Building the new park will happen on the site of the old stadium. T’aint cheap to tear down that old stadium. Oh, there will be some trees included in the price, too, planted in the shape of the old stadium. They ought to plant them in the shape of a big dollar sign.
• Everybody pays: Whaddaya mean? Under baseball’s collective bargaining act, the cost of a new stadium can be deducted in part from the amount a team pays into revenue sharing. Revenue sharing is the deal where the rich teams have to share their bounty with the poor teams, or viewed another way, the way the big powerful guys pay the little not so powerful guys in order to assure that the little guys will continue to put cupcake teams on the field for the big guys to kick the crap out of every year. So some of the little guys won’t be getting as much loot because the biggest big guy built a new playpen. Yeah, sounds fair, no?
• Are we done yet? Almost. The Yankees didn't suck up all the money. They share the Jablko Duzy (that's approximately "Big Apple" in Polish) with the Mets, who have played since 1964 in Shea Stadium. Shea Stadium is also disappearing this fall, since while all this Yankee Stadium stuff is going on there is ANOTHER playpen going up at the same time: the Mets’ new Citi Field. It’s costing a measley 800 million bucks. I’m sure there’s another goldmine of numbers there, but I cannot do any more of this.

Have you ever heard Frank Sinatra sing "There Used to Be a Ballpark There"? Don't get so emotional, there's a new song for this switcheroo. How about a little Pink Floyd "Money"?