Kevin Manahan, in the Star-Ledger, has an interesting feature today on Lonn Trost and the new Yankee Stadium. Here’s some highlights:

“Here it is,” [Lonn Trost] says, flipping it open. “Some front-row seats will cost $2,500, but 55 percent — more than half — of the seats will be $45 or less. Ninety-one percent will cost $100 or less. We made sure that 24,500 seats will not have a price increase. What you pay here, you’ll pay there.”
…

“Look, we can’t lose the next generation of Yankee fan because a father can’t afford to take his kid to a game.”

Trost, a Monroe resident who raised his two children in North Brunswick, is the steward of the new Yankee Stadium now under construction and opening next season. He has been entrusted by owners George, Hal and Hank Steinbrenner with veto and approval power on the $1.2 billion project, and he might be the perfect guy to oversee the replacement of Major League Baseball’s most storied stadium.

Trost insists he is part of a team and isn’t single-handedly building a stadium. But he also realizes any foul-up could compromise it. So, it keeps him awake at night.

“I have a responsibility to the owner and the fans,” Trost says. “People say it’s my baby. But it’s not my stadium. It’s everybody’s. I have to do what’s right. I’ll be criticized for some things, lauded for others. Hopefully, we won’t make too many mistakes, because we will make mistakes.

After a job as a tax attorney with the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., [Trost's] ticket home was a job at Shea and Gould. It’s the New York law firm of William Shea, who had been instrumental in persuading the National League to award a franchise to the Mets and for whom the team’s stadium is named. With a fanatical knowledge of New York sports and a sunrise-to-sunset work ethic, Trost made connections that eventually led to work as outside counsel for the Yankees. He went in-house in 1997 as the team’s general counsel, and was named COO in 2000.

“The only thing that anyone could have used to predict that I’d end up here was my love for the Yankees,” Trost says.

Here’s a funny thing about the new Yankee Stadium. Back in March of this year, I shared some information about the “premium seating” at the new digs. At that time, the Yankees did contact me to see if I wanted to upgrade my season package to get in on those seats.

Of course, those seats are way out of my budget, so, I passed in a nano-second.

Yet, last week, the Yankees contacted me again – this time by phone – asking me again if I wanted to upgrade my season tickets to get in on the “premium seating.” They even tried to pitch it with the preface that “We’re going to do our best to relocate you in the new Stadium. But, we won’t have any information on that for a few months. Here’s a chance to get premium seats, now, etc.”

Of course, I passed again.

But, it got me thinking. If the Yankees are coming to me, Joe Nobody, now, four months after these seats first went on sale, with such a pitch…could it be possible that the Yankees are actually having problems selling these $500 per game (single seat) tickets? Imagine that, huh?