Friday, February 08, 2008

$50 million per year

They're saying that's the amount the Yankees turned down for the new stadium's naming rights. They have decided to call it Yankee Stadium.

Wow!

If that doesn't tell you how much money they're making, I'm not sure anything does.

3 comments:

Greg said...

I'm torn on this. On one hand, it's damn impressive that they turned down that much money, and I hope that the Cubs and Red Sox can continue to show the same restraint. Some things just shouldn't be sold.

However, calling it Yankee Stadium is a little off-putting. It's not Yankee Stadium. The place where the Yankees play now is Yankee Stadium. Now, the fact that it's named after the team that plays there makes it a different situation than Fenway or Wrigley, but can you imagine Comerica Park being called Tiger Stadium, especially while Tiger Stadium still stands? It's just strange.

For example, when they replaced the Boston Garden, there was support to name the new building the Boston Garden. I wanted to keep the name, too, but I was 15. Once the original was gone, though, I realized that there could be only one. When they changed the name of the new building to the TD Banknorth Garden and rolled out the "Go ahead, call it the Garden again" promotional campaign, I got a little upset. This new-fangled, charmless building is NOT the Boston Garden, and it never will be.

Anyway, I don't know if Yankee fans feel the same way, or if they don't now but might later, but it feels weird to me.

Greg said...

By the way, Ross, thank you for bumping my Super Bowl post... I'm sick of looking at it.

Ross said...

No problem, on the Super Bowl post thing.

I definitely think Yankee fans across the board want it known as Yankee Stadium. New York also has a long history of this.

Afterall, the current Madison Square Garden is the 4th installment of it. The original one was actually located at Madison Square, which is obviously how it got it's name. As it has changed locations, and been nowhere near Madison Square.

So if we can deal with that we can definitely handle the new ballpark being called Yankee Stadium.