Yanks Seem Cursed in Pinstriped Palace

Need I remind you that a dreaded Boston Red Sox jersey, bearing the name and number of David Ortiz, was buried in concrete inside the new Yankee Stadium? And that construction workers last spring had to use jackhammers to remove it, lest the poison linger like salmonella in a service corridor at one of the ballpark's many chi-chi restaurants?

I can't help but think a curse was effectively planted. Because since the Yankees moved into their $1.5-billion pinstriped palace, they've been haunted by non-stop reminders of their greed, arrogance, bad karma and spending foolishness.

How so? Oh, the blue-cushioned seats between the dugouts continue to be repulsively overpriced, even after a markdown, to the point they remain largely empty and symbolic of corporate ignorance in an economic crisis. And the club is underperforming at 13-14, going 0-5 against the Red Sox in a two-series sweep that hasn't happened to open a season since 1912, when the Yankees were known as the Highlanders. And the concept of trying to buy a championship, which hasn't worked since 2000, once again is backfiring early, as $161-million pitching ace C.C. Sabathia weighs in with a 4.85 ERA, 1-3 record and 300-pound body, while $180-million slugger Mark Teixeira, even with a three-run double Wednesday night, is hitting .209.

By any definition, paying big bucks to watch this team constitutes consumer fraud.

"We want Torre! We Want Torre!'' the fans chanted the other night. It was the first sign that Joe Girardi, Joe Torre's managerial successor, is on the public hot seat and perhaps overwhelmed by Alex Rodriguez chaos and the other madness that accompanies the most scrutinized position in American sports.

"It's not any fun, that's for sure. It's frustrating,'' said Girardi, who has faced plenty of injuries so far, not to mention the media suffocation surrounding A-Rod and his possible return Friday in Baltimore. "It's not the way you want to start a season, but it's where we are. We've got to do something about it.'' That will be easier said than accomplished in a stadium that has yielded 39 homers in its first dozen games, with a jet-stream effect to right field not conducive to helping an ultra-expensive starting rotation filled with struggling arms.

But what gets me, more than any of the issues in baseball's wildest ongoing soap opera, is how the Yankees can charge as much as $1,250 for tickets -- three figures in the outfield -- and have a shameful public-relations snafu involving the paying customers. By now, you've surely heard about the hundreds of ticket-holders who were denied reentry into the ballpark Monday night. Many claimed they had been told by security officers and customer-service representatives -- holding "How May I Help You?'' signs, believe it or not -- that the game with the Red Sox would be rained out after a long delay. Upon leaving, they heard the public-address announcer bark over the outdoor speakers that the game would resume at 9:20 p.m., prompting a mad rush back to the gates. But stadium policy is stadium policy: Reentry isn't permitted, causing such a frantic scene outside that NYPD officers had to intercede and a woman was arrested for allegedly kicking one of them.


Whether or not the team's own employees were dispensing inaccurate information -- upper management did deliver a tongue-lashing to certain department heads the next day -- there's no excuse in this day and age for the Yankees not to let anyone with a ticket back inside. Think about it: In times when it's hard for many people to pay their mortgages, the Yankees insist on charging premium prices to visit their Taj Mahal. The least they can do, while working out the kinks of poor communication, is waive the no-reentry rule and let the good people enjoy their expensive investments. When so much money is on the line, the Yankees should have made regular update announcements during the two-hour-plus delay. Instead, they made only one before the 7:05 p.m. original start time and another at 8:50 p.m., informing fans that the game would start in a half-hour. They'd sat for almost two hours, with nothing to do but get wet and spend ungodly sums on $10 beers and $15 prime-rib sandwiches.

Keep them posted, you know?

And refund their money, would you?

"If you start letting people re-enter, you're open to ticket scams and a number of other operational issues,'' Yankees spokesman Jason Zillo explained to reporters.

Hey, you're better off letting a few scam artists inside and taking care of good, honest fans who paid to see a ballgame. But the Yankees are so protective of their brand name and stadium, they're turning off the people who matter. They're also turning off the people who don't matter as much -- the media -- with a security guard escorting away Paul O'Neill, one of the most popular recent Yankees and an analyst with the team-owned TV network, because he was committing the sin of watching players hit in the indoor batting cages. The team also threatened to revoke a credential of a New York Daily News photographer for shooting the rain-delay fan scene outside Gate 6, which sounds like the government censorship I encountered in China, a Communist land, during the Summer Olympics.

Tensions might be eased if the Yankees were winning consistently. But they lost their fourth straight Wednesday, 4-3 to the Tampa Bay Rays, and now are 6-6 in their new digs. This comes after they were humbled by the Red Sox, which caused Johnny Damon to say, "They outplayed us. They outpitched us. At this point in the season, they are a better team than us. Because we're 0-5, it's going to make us a better team, a tougher team, a team that's more together, a team that's going to rally behind our players.''

There's a school of thought that a rally can't happen until Girardi is replaced. His peculiar rip job on a scandalous book about Rodriguez, by author Selena Roberts, suggests that the heat is getting to him. Torre, who ironically wound up writing a tell-all himself, would have deflected the negative attention in the same chair by not mentioning the book. All Girardi did was sell more copies for Roberts and create another negative headline.

"I have some issues with it, that it's interesting how the book date got moved up,'' he said, wandering into territory that shouldn't concern him. "And I get tired of answering these questions. I don't understand why someone would write a book like this anyway, and some people may not care to hear that but I don't understand.''

You're in New York, Joe. You're managing the most polarizing athlete in America, Joe. Deal with it.

"There's things in my life that I'm not proud of, that I've done,'' Girardi went on. "I wouldn't want my kids to have to deal with it. You know, I tell my kids that daddy makes mistakes. I do, and I apologize to them. I say, 'Daddy's not perfect.' It's not necessarily something that I would want them to read about all the time and to be the focus. This man wants to be a father, too.''


Girardi, who is all about family and faith, may or may not have had one too many beers at some point in his career. It's hard to believe he'd compare his "mistakes'' to those of Rodriguez, who has been caught lying, cheating and womanizing, among other things. Yes, a manager is protecting his player -- but this speech was a stretch beyond the bounds of credibility. Girardi also is conveniently forgetting that Roberts' book prompted Major League Baseball to re-open an investigation of Rodriguez, who is accused of tipping pitches to receive favors from opposing players and lying about his so-called three-year steroids timetable.

Distractions are everywhere on this team, which doesn't help a pitching staff that sports some of baseball's worst numbers. Sabathia and A.J. ($82.5 million, 5.26 ERA) Burnett haven't been remotely worth the money so far, and Chien-Ming Wang is in career limbo at the moment. Then there's the mysterious Joba Chamberlain, who typically allowed hits to the first five Boston batters in a four-run first inning the other night, then just as typically struck out 12 over 5 2/3 innings. This after his mother was busted in Nebraska for allegedly selling meth to an undercover cop.

I might argue that the Yankees should be paying fans to watch some of this junk. Even the most financially secure CEOs aren't willing to sit in the 98 first-row seats that cost $1,250, many of which were unoccupied during a Boston series that usually is a lockdown sellout. "I know there weren't a lot of fans in those sections right behind the dugout,'' said Red Sox star Dustin Pedroia, rubbing salt in the wound. "I don't know why.''

I do. It's called avoiding a ripoff.