Yanks Adjust BP Access Policy For Fans

Via the Times –

For generations, die-hard fans have showed up early to baseball games to watch batting practice and get an autograph.

So fans at Yankee Stadium this season were dismayed to find out they could not go down to the field level before the game unless they had a ticket to sit there. Brenna Mahoney of New Jersey learned this when she took her son early to a game in April.

“I have been going to batting practice for about 20 years for this time-honored tradition of letting a kid who doesn’t sit in the premium seats where players are at close view and foul balls are regularly caught, have a shot at a wave from a favorite player or a prized ball to take home,” she said in an e-mail message last month.

Mahoney was not the only fan to complain, so on Thursday the Yankees changed their policy. Fans will now be able to watch batting practice from the seats along the left- and right-field lines and in the outfield (Sections 129 to 136 and 103 to 111).

Alice McGillion, a spokeswoman for the Yankees, said that after the team received complaints, it looked at the policy at the old Yankee Stadium. There, fans who had any field-level seat could watch batting practice.

“We liberalized the policy even more,” she said. “This is part of living in a new home and making adjustments. It’s only been a month.”

According to the new rules, posted on the Yankees’ Web site, fans can watch batting practice starting three hours before the start of each home game. Fans can stay on the field level and in the bleachers until the players leave the field or 1 hour 45 minutes after the gates open. Then “all fans will be asked to return to their respective seats.”

Sounds like a nice compromise to me. Sections 103 to 111 is prime BP homer territory. If I were going to hang out at the field level, before a game, as the players hit, that’s where I would want to be…

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