2009: The Year The City Broke

Writers and historians will use this anecdote in the introductions of the many books yet to be written detailing the Fall of New York City:

After spending $2.3 billion on new stadiums packed with suites, restaurants and the latest technology, the Mets and the Yankees expected fans to embrace their new homes and pay top dollar for the privilege. Almost every team that has built a new stadium in the recent past has seen an immediate surge in attendance.

Instead, the Mets and the Yankees face a public relations nightmare and possibly millions of dollars in lost revenue after failing to sell about 5,000 tickets — including some of the priciest seats — to each of their first few games after last week’s openers.

The empty seats are a fresh sign that the teams might have miscalculated how much fans and corporations were willing to spend, particularly during a deep recession. Whatever the reason, the teams are scrambling to comb over their $295- to $2,625-a-seat bald spots.

. . .

But the slow start in New York is striking considering how much the teams here spent to build and promote their parks. Like airlines that break even on economy tickets and rely on first-class travelers to turn a profit, the teams need to sell their most exclusive seats to help repay the hundreds of millions of dollars of tax-free bonds they issued to finance their new parks.

The unfilled seats in New York are even more glaring compared with how robust sales have been for previous stadium openings. The Baltimore Orioles sold out 67 of their 80 home dates in 1992, when Camden Yards opened. The Cleveland Indians sold out 36 games in the strike-shortened season in 1994, and were filled to capacity 455 consecutive games from 1995 to 2001.

After moving to their new park in 2001, the Houston Astros drew 3.1 million fans, 300,000 more than they ever attracted at the far larger Astrodome. The Pittsburgh Pirates, a perennial second-division team, sold 2.4 million tickets in 2001 when PNC Park opened, 700,000 more than they ever sold at Three Rivers Stadium.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium, Citi Field.

No One Expects A 22-4 Drubbing!

In the realm of entertainment — whether it be sports or music or whatever — there is difference between a “game” and a “performance.” With the former, time was, you’d go to the ballpark, pay some nominal admission fee to get into a “game” and watch two teams slug it out. With the latter, you go to Broadway to pay for your Cynthia Nixons or Judd Hirsches and have some reasonable expectation that you’re seeing a performer at the top of his or her game giving you a “performance.” It’s the same in Vegas; you get the Celine Dion “performance” or the Dean Martin “performance” and Celine makes you cry during “My Heart Will Go On” or Deano brings you to years with his routines and bits. That’s entertainment!

But the thing is that when you inflate ticket prices of sporting events to absurd heights, people then start expecting something more than “a day at the ballpark.” In short, they want a performance. And then it becomes a case of Dance, Monkey, Dance:

The new Yankee Stadium was spotless and the weather stunning, but the Bombers stunk it up in The Bronx yesterday, subjecting their fuming fans to a putrid performance against the Indians, who scored an eye-popping 22 runs.

The loss — one of the worst in team history — was the Yankees’ second in three games in their new $1.5 billion ballpark.

But this one stung the Pinstripe faithful, who forked over as much as $2,625 to see the pitiful play, like few ever before.

“It’s a tragedy. This is the worst game I’ve ever seen,” said a seething Erich Wald, 28, of Toms River, NJ.

“You can’t afford to buy anything at this Stadium,” he added, “and the players are going to go out and have $50 steaks when it’s over.”

Jon Brawn, 26, of White Plains, couldn’t agree more.

“I woke up this morning expecting to see something great in this brand-new Stadium,” Brawn said, “and what I got was a calamity.”

. . .

“I paid $10 a beer to see this chop-shop team? They suck!” cried Shawn McCarthy, 28, of Hoboken, as he fled during the seventh-inning stretch.

“George Steinbrenner,” he added, “should take down ticket prices if we’re just gonna see a home-run derby by the Indians.”

A couple that had trekked all the way from West Palm Beach, Fla., to check out their favorite team’s spanking-new digs said they, too, were leaving with a sour taste in their mouths.

“I’ve been a fan since 1958,” said Fred Bingiano, 57. “We used to come back in the ’90s, and it was $36 a ticket. Today, we paid $350 each.”

His wife Deborah, 45, was just as disgusted.

“Families can’t come together anymore,” she noted before speaking for a lot of disaffected fans by tossing out the quintessential New York judgment: “Fuhgeddaboutit.”

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

Citi Field Opens!

Mets Disappoint!:

For a night, Queens was the hot spot in town and New York glowed orange and blue. The Mets, not the Yankees, opened their gleaming new ballpark first, and Citi Field was primped and primed for the occasion, as if it were preparing for a date. Monday was Citi Field’s night to shine, and the Mets, after two rehearsals and a week on the road, were eager to show it off.

Reality soon intruded, however, and the Mets bumbled their way to a 6-5 loss to San Diego, the game turning for the second straight day on an outfield mishap. Long after Mike Pelfrey got his cleat stuck in the dirt, falling off the mound, and Jose Reyes slid past second base, Ryan Church misplayed Luis Rodriguez’s sixth-inning fly ball into a three-base error.

Almost fittingly, Pedro Feliciano balked in the eventual winning run, and the Mets’ final 10 hitters went down in order. In a somewhat comical twist, two of their bullpen castoffs — Duaner Sanchez and Heath Bell — closed out San Diego’s win.

. . .

After throwing out the final pitch at Shea on Sept. 28, Tom Seaver and Mike Piazza left through the center-field gate. They entered Citi Field with their arms locked, chatting and waving on the long, slow walk toward the mound.

Nervous he would bounce the pitch, Seaver threw a strike. A few minutes later, at 7:11 p.m., Pelfrey threw a first-pitch strike to Jody Gerut. The next strike he threw landed in the right-field stands, Gerut hooking a 1-1 pitch inside the foul pole for the first regular-season homer at Citi Field.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Gerut is the first player to lead off a game with a homer in the first game at a new stadium.

Location Scout: Citi Field.

Scoreboard, Baby!

That’s it. Just “scoreboard.” We don’t even want to buy something in this stupid city; we just want you to admit that you were wrong all along:

For years, Halstead Property’s Richard Grossman has run a boot camp, teaching agents how to get buyers approved by co-op boards. In it, he presents four hypothetical applicant profiles. The first is a professional — a teacher, perhaps — with an average income but an outsize down payment. The second is a bonus-dependent candidate like a banker, who makes $80,000 and is putting down the minimum, but has a bonus three times his salary. The third, a non–Wall Streeter, earns somewhere in the low six figures and has a small bonus and a standard down payment, and the fourth, a first-time buyer with a good job, relies on relatives to cobble together a decent down payment.

In the past, says Grossman, agents invariably picked the financier as the most board-worthy, thanks to his bonus. At last month’s seminar, however, the answers were unanimous: “Go with the teacher.” And that is a big change. “If you were bidding against someone from Wall Street who had this kind of bonus history, you couldn’t compete. First of all, they were willing to outbid you, and second of all, the sellers were willing to take them over somebody else,” says Gumley Haft Kleier president Michele Kleier. “Bonus used to be the favorite word in everybody’s vocabulary. Now salary is a much more attractive word.” Admits one Upper West Side board member: “We’re definitely cautious across the board now, especially when someone’s touting their bonus.”

A-Clod

One more tantalizing Alex Rodriguez detail to take with you into Spring Training:

The Manhattan madam linked to former Gov. Eliot Spitzer claims she had a “connection” and “flirtation” with scandal-scarred Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez.

Kristin Davis, who says she met the third-baseman at a Philadelphia gym in 2005, told the Post that: “our paths have crossed both personally and professionally,” and that “there was a flirtation there.”

. . .

When asked if the Yankee patronized her escort agency, Davis, who said she likes Latin men, would only say that they had a “professional” relationship.