Atmosphere at Yankee Stadium Must Change

The Yankees opened up their new palace last year. There was something lacking at their new stadium.

Sure, the food over there is awesome. No one can escape watching that enormous jumbotron at the stadium.

With that said, something did not add up. We saw many empty seats in the field level. It was detectable watching no one behind home plate.

Fans couldn’t afford to pay tickets at a ridiculous price. Most of the crowds were either visitors from other parts of the country or corporates.

This citizen has friends that could not afford to go to a game at Yankee Stadium. They have been priced out from going to the games. They rather prioritize their money to other things such as paying bills, which is a reasonable thing to do.

The only reason why this writer went to couple of games at Yankee Stadium this year was because he received free tickets from a cousin’s friend. If not for free tickets, he would have yet to go to a game at the new Yankee Stadium.

This shouldn’t sit well with the Yankees. It shows the Yankees need to do a better job of trying to attract people from middle class to go to the games. A stadium experience should be about fans that are either poor or making minimum wages to go along with the rich folks.

Most diehards stems from fans that can’t afford to games. The corporate or visitors can care less. They are not baseball fans. They are just fans that need to have a good time.

That’s one reason why the passion is not there at the Stadium. That’s on the Yankees to change that.

Fans that go to the games need to do a better job of getting into games. Too many times, fans go just to be seen and heard. They don’t pay attention to what goes on. All they do is take pictures or call someone in the cell phone. Either that or people go out and get drunk.

Just because fans wear their Yankees gear does not mean they are into the game. It means someone who is seeking attention and nothing more.

A fan that is into the game is a fan that knows what’s going on. A fan shouldn’t be relying on the jumbotron to get them to cheer or boo. When has New York become a small-market town where fans don’t know how to react on a play or get the team going?

In the old Yankee Stadium, it would never happen. If the late George Steinbrenner was alert, he would never allow this type of gimmick. It just shows George’s sons have long ways to go until they know what a baseball atmosphere is.

This place has become too corporate. It hasn’t been fan friendly. It hasn’t been the home-field advantage the Yankees once enjoyed at the old Yankee Stadium. It showed this season, especially in the playoffs.

This is unacceptable.

When Nolan Ryan and his wife are chuckling and having the time of their life, this shouldn’t sit well. This also shouldn’t sit well when the Rangers felt comfortable in the three games played at the Bronx this week.

It isn’t just the Rangers that felt comfortable. It was basically any visiting teams that felt like they can do anything they want over there.

Only time fans get involved is when the Red Sox come to town, and that’s it. These young people only care because of the history the Yankees have with the Red Sox. If the Red Sox had a history like the Rays or  the Rangers, no one would care.

That’s sad. It shows Yankees fans of today just don’t get it.

When an opposing team is on the road, they need to be booed and heckled. They need to be harassed. They need to be miserable. They need to be begging to go home again.

This is not the South, West Coast or the Midwest where it’s all hunky-dory. East Coast sports fans have a reputation for being intense, but unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore here at the South Bronx.

Either those folks need to get better or sell their tickets to fans who would die to go.

The Yankees don’t need any fans that seem disinterested. What they need is genuine support and love.

Only way the Yankees can change that is to go scale down the ticket prices. They act like their ticket plan is a success. No, it’s not.

Get back to where tickets are affordable for a blue-collar worker. Do that, and maybe the stadium will be rocking like the old place. The blue-collars are much more into sports than white-collars.

All white-collar people do is drink champagne, check on their cell phones and do things that should never take place in a baseball game. Some don’t even show up when we want to.

Sorry, but Donald Trump, Spike Lee and other celebrities don’t get worked up about Yankees losses like a blue-collar do. Is this what the Yankees want? It seems like it’s that way.

That would be the wrong approach. If anyone watched the playoff atmosphere at Arlington, Philadelphia and San Francisco this October, they saw fans screaming at every play or pitch. They saw fans getting involved.

That’s what baseball should be. Not folks approaching baseball as a soap opera.

It makes this New Yorker sick. It should make the Steinbrenners sick too.

Just exactly what are the Yankees going to do about it? This is an issue they have to address and not take this lightly.

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