Yankees: Here we Go With The Big Sell – Derek Jeter Night

The Yankees, for all the joy they provide by consistently putting a competitive team on the field year after year, still manage, every once in awhile, to disappoint and bite the hands that feed them. The Big Sell is underway in their Bronx corporate offices. And if it goes much further, what should be an iconic night in their storied history will be undermined and oversold.

The Yankees play in a venue that seats 54,251 fans. On Mother’s Day, there won’t be an empty seat in the House That Jeter Built when the team honors its most recent icon, Derek Jeter. They waited two full seasons, and it must have killed them to wait that long.

But the real story lies in the New York Daily News headline this morning that screams, “Yankees Jack Up Ticket Prices For Derek Jeter Night.”

According to the Yankees official website, ticket prices for the May 14 (Mother’s Day) game against the Astros at 7:30 p.m. range from $90 bleacher seats to $500 Field Level seats. Just to compare, a bleacher seat the day before the ceremony for Jeter can be had for as little as $10.

This means that a family of four can attend the game to get a backache and be splashed with beer for the price of a mere $400, not counting the hot dogs, caps, peanuts, parking, program, and yearbook. All of this for the privilege of seeing a tiny dot standing at home plate thanking, “above all else,” the best fans in the whole wide world.

The sad thing is that the Yankees don’t need to do this.

And unless you intend to finagle a second mortgage on your home, you don’t even want to know what the cost of a ticket will ultimately be if you purchase from the Yankees “partner” and Mafia-like extortion specialists, StubHub.

And, it’s only February. Wait til the Yankees get this thing revved up for real.

Okay, I’m a little amped up. But the thing that irks is that the Yankees don’t have to do this. This is not Kansas City where they have one legitimate player equal to the caliber of Jeter in George Brett, and every five years or so they need to fill their ballpark with a “new” way to honor him. The Yankees do this every year with this player or that player, and they bring everyone back for another sell-out on Old Timers Day, which is now Old Timers Night, by the way.

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The franchise is a money making machine. They could, for instance, have come up with a marketing plan that rewards every fan attending a Yankees game before May 10, let’s say, with a lottery ticket that would entitle them to participate in a drawing.

The first 27,000 names (half the capacity) drawn are entitled to purchase two tickets for $5 each, and they still would be able to pay their shareholders a hefty dividend at Christmastime.

For his part, Derek Jeter may or may not be aware of the shenanigans that are just beginning. But if he isn’t, he should be. After all, this is his night and he carries a bucketload of “juice” in the affair if he wants to expend some of it.

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And like yourself, hopefully, I’m going to bury this to concentrate, instead, on the real reason to be a Yankees fan today – the promise that the 2017 season brings with the product on the field. Together with all those questions that will be answered surrounding the likes of Greg Bird, Gary Sanchez, Gleyber Torres, and on and on.