Via an excellent Mel Antonen feature on the new Yankee Stadium -

The New York Yankees and Texas Rangers open a series tonight at the new Yankee Stadium as baseball’s top home-run hitting teams. In the past, that prodigious power would conjure memories of all-time sluggers or stir speculation about performance-enhancing drugs. But there might be a greater power at work in the Bronx.

“We’re dealing with some phenomenon that we don’t have our hands wrapped around,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman says.

Indeed, two months into the season the most expensive stadium ever built is being tormented by unpredictable winds and beset by a chaotic debate over whether the home runs there are the cheapest aspect of the $1.5 billion ballpark.

“There’s no doubt that the new Yankee Stadium has taken over as the best hitters’ park in baseball,” Baltimore Orioles first baseman Aubrey Huff says. “Someone’s going to hit 90 home runs there.”

The Yankees observed the wind patterns before opening the stadium, working with RWDI, an engineering firm in Guelph, Ontario, that studies wind currents in sports stadiums. RWDI declined to comment, but Yankees CEO Lonn Trost says the team is doing more studies.

“Even the winds — based upon wind analysis and wind studies — we (are) having were the least likely to occur,” Trost told news reporters last month. “So who can tell? We’ll always look and analyze, and right now I don’t think I can do anything about the wind.”

Cashman says the wind might not be the only reason home runs are soaring. He says umpires may be calling a tighter strike zone and points out that home runs and walks are up this season, from 1.80 homers per game in 2008 to 2.05 this year and from 6.73 walks per game to 7.20 in 2009.

“All that leads to more hitters’ counts like 3-1 and 2-0, and that leads to more home runs,” Cashman says.

Dennis Torok, manager of the Montreal-based Newmerical Technologies, studies wind and its effect on buildings, and says there are several ways to reduce the wind patterns at Yankee Stadium without altering the playing field. The team could change the slope of the roof or put attachments on it to deflect wind that whips into the stadium.

Torok also says the open concourses, surrounding buildings and the slope of grandstand seating could be factors.

Winds in New York will “approach from the westerly directions a larger percentage of time,” Torok says, and that creates the jet stream that goes out to right field.

For example, Torok says the wind came from the west April 18, when the Yankees and Indians combined for eight home runs in a 22-4 Cleveland victory.

Me? I’m starting to think it’s the wind/jet-stream to right combined with the shorter distances to the power-alley in right field that’s causing all this mess.

So, the answer, for me, would be to install mesh windscreens somewhere in the stadium to mitigate the jet stream and make the fence higher out in right/right-center. Hey, it’s a start…and something to consider for next year.

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You have to “love” this quote, via the AP -

Speaking during a court hearing in Albany Monday, Yankees CEO Lonn Trost says 90 percent of non-suite stadium tickets cost under $100.

Translation: 95% of the seats in the upper-deck and bleachers cost under $100 per ticket.

Wow. Big whoops.

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To watch SNY.tv’s New York Baseball Today, which features a rotating panel of experts, click play below:

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So far, this season, Alex Rodriguez has played games against the Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Minnesota Twins, Philadelphia Phillies, Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays – collecting 97 PA and fashioning a BA/OBA/SLG line of: .260/.412/.584

That’s great.

But, if you take out his games against the Twins and Rangers, A-Rod has the following BA/OBA/SLG line this season .189/.328/.434 (in 64 PA).

That’s not so good.

Of course, this is all small sample size stuff. But, it would be nice to see Alex Rodriguez start pounding some teams other than the Twins and Rangers this season, right?

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Via Wallace Matthews last Saturday –

The evidence is mounting rapidly. In the Bronx, 23 home dates and only one announced sellout, on Opening Day. In Flushing, the same number of dates, the same number of sellouts.

Through Friday, the Mets and Yankees were leading their divisions. Yet there are plenty of seats available at both new ballparks despite a winter of priceless free publicity and an endless stream of hype during each team’s broadcasts.

The teams knew attendance would be down this year — they engineered the parks to hold fewer people and rake in more money — but still, they were designed to operate at full capacity every night, and so far, each has managed to do that. Once.

If early-season baseball attendance in New York is a referendum on just how far our teams can push their fan bases, the fans in Flushing and the Bronx have voted, and the results appear to be pretty definitive.

The answer is, not much further.

OK, so neither the new Yankee Stadium nor its counterpart in Flushing can handle the capacity of their predecessors. Fine. But where are the 53,070 people who came nightly to the old Yankee Stadium in 2008, and where are the 49,902 who showed up every night in the final season of Shea Stadium?

So far, the Yankees are averaging 44,636 in their new crib, the Mets 38,806. If baseball is so popular in this town and Yankees and Mets games truly are must-see events, as both clubs insisted throughout the offseason, why aren’t there 10,000 people milling around outside their ballparks every game night, trying to buy up every last ticket in the house, and the rest going home empty-handed and disappointed?

One of the reasons, of course, is simple and self-evident. It’s the economy, stupid. But in a metropolitan area that certainly has more than 83,442 people – the combined average attendance at both parks – wealthy enough to buy their way into these exclusive clubs dressed as ballparks, there has to be something more to it.

It just might be that the remarkably deep-pocketed, thick-skinned and resilient sports fans of this town finally have reached their limit.

Clearly, people are opting out of spending exorbitant amounts to witness baseball games in the flesh, especially when it is much more economical, not to mention fan-friendly, to simply plop down in the recliner in front of the HDTV, crack a beer, pop your own corn and not have to contend with traffic, or shell out $19 for parking and $10 for tolls, and heaven knows how much else at the concession stands.

It’s simply no longer worth it, no matter how good the team is or how deeply ingrained in your DNA the ritual of going to the ballpark on a summer night really is.

Gotta say…I figure that the five Yankees games which I plan on attending this season is going to cost me about $1,000, all told, when you factor everything in…

…and, at times, I have thought about taking that money and buying the biggest, baddest, high-def, television and just watching all the games on that puppy…

…so, if others are thinking the same thing…it might become the wave of the future.

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