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Yes Censorship Points To Conflict In Yankee Front Office (UPDATED: RAB Statement)

Posted by EJ Fagan at 1:00 pm 14 Responses »
Jan 272011

I’ve avoided commenting much on Moshe’s post about how YES seemed to have put pressure on two of its blogs, River Ave Blues and The Pinstripe Bible, to wait to see if anyone involved with deny it. The YES Network’s official response was “no comment”, as was the official response from both the writers at River Ave Blues and the Pinstripe Bible. That they refused to deny that something went on, in my mind, is pretty close to confirmation that something did go on.

Some bloggers, promoted by YES, said that the Rafael Soriano deal was a bad decision. They weren’t particularly vitriolic about it, they just disagreed with the signing. At the same time, Brian Cashman publicly, although politely, disagreed with the signing. He said that it was a bad idea, and very blankly stated that he had nothing to do with it. Someone else in the Yankee organization went over his head and convinced ownership to make a bad move. Welcome back to the George Steinbrenner area.

It is significant because both RAB and the Pinstripe Bible blogs say negative things about the Yankees all the time, but this has never been a problem in the past. YES, correctly, doesn’t think that it costs the Yankees one cent to have a sponsored blog dissent every once in awhile. However, the Rafael Soriano signing somehow triggered a response from someone in the hierarchy. I think that it is possible that Randy Levine is the person behind it all. Levine is the President of the New York Yankees, and had been George Steinbrenner’s chief voice in the Yankee front office. Levine was the key player in Steinbrenner’s Tampa-based decision making team in the late Torre years, but eventually lost much of his influence as Steinbrenner grew old and Brian Cashman established his autonomous control of the front office. He was reported to be the person behind the signing. He’s also known to be a bit hotheaded and temperamental.

I suspect that Randy Levine was quite sensitive that his YES-sponsored blogs were saying bad things about his signing, and by extension him, and called up to yell at someone at YES. YES responded by telling Steve Goldman to take down and then heavily edit his post, and by removing RAB from the YES site for a couple of days.

This is important because it indicates a renewed power struggle within the Yankee front office. As William notes in this post, this kind of split would be a big problem for the Yankees. Baseball teams have to make moves with a focused, long term plan in mind. A two-headed monster leading the organization will not be good in the long term, regardless of what you think of the Soriano signing. It wasn’t all that long ago that Brian Cashman had to fight Randy Levine to not trade prospects, invest more in the draft, or make important personnel decisions (Notably, Guerrero vs. Sheffield). To make matters more complicated, Brian Cashman’s contract is up after this season.

We could be in for a rocky year.

Photo Credit: John Munson/The Star-Ledger

Updated by Moshe: I just received an official statement from RAB on this issue:

“The YES Network has no editorial control over the content produced by River Ave. Blues, and at no point during our relationship has YES ever asked us to edit or remove any post we’ve published on RAB.”

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Most of Those Seats are Sold?

Posted by Steve S. at 6:58 am 9 Responses »
Apr 222009

Much has been made in the past few days about all the empty seats in the field level boxes. Peter Abraham is reporting that Yankee officials are claiming those expensive seats are actually sold, but the people who bought them are afraid to use them.

Meanwhile, I heard an interesting theory from somebody with the Yankees on Tuesday. They claim that many of those empty seats we’re seeing are actually sold, but the ticket-holders are afraid to attend games because they work for troubled businesses and don’t want to be caught living it up on television.

That’s just great. The seats are so extravagant that wealthy people won’t attend because it’ll make them look bad. Maybe the Yankees can provide disguises to these folks. Your bank get bailed out by the feds? Here’s a Joe Girardi mask. Have a good time.

That sounds a bit weak on the face of it, but then Jason over at Its About the Money, Stupid chimes in with this personal account.

A few weeks back, we went to a friends’ house for an afternoon. While watching the Masters with my friend (a Wall Streeter), we were discussing this and he made an interesting point. He said to me: “Jason, even if I had those great seats that cost $2500 a ticket, I can’t take a client there. It’s not worth the risk.” I asked him about what risk he was talking about and his answer surprised me as I hadn’t thought of that: “If someone recognizes me sitting behind the dugout and it comes out that I used my Firm’s resources for those seats, and we’ve taken TARP money from the government, I don’t want that sort of publicity or getting calls from The Post.” He’s not a famous guy at all, but there’s a fear that someone might see him and he’ll get “outed” for using Firm money to attend a game. He also told me that he’s not alone with this fear.

What, are they at the stadium but hiding in the NYY Steakhouse? I haven’t seen rich people this scared since Jan 1st, 1959 in Cuba, when Castro took Santa Clara and Batista fled the country.

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What to do about the empty seats?

Posted by Steve S. at 7:53 am 5 Responses »
Apr 212009

Its no secret the Yanks overpriced the seats between the bases. Seems like everyone is talking about it these days. The Yanks have been running ads in the NYC area for the past month trying to sell them, apparently without much luck. They were previously only available as full season packages and now can be had as partial plans, yet fans still aren’t biting.

Fans who’ve complained about the high prices on those seats always struck me as short sighted and having a conveniently short and selective memory. First, the high prices on those seats allowed the Yanks to maintain the low prices they had in the Bleachers and Grandstand in the old Yankee stadium. So if you were railing against the $2625 seats and sitting in the upper deck, you were arguing for your own price increase next year. Also, most of those seats between the bases were always owned by big corporations and weren’t available to the average fan, even at the old stadium. So building a new ballpark had nothing to do with their availability, and has the oddly had the unintended consequence of making them available for the first time in generations, just at a price that no one is willing to pay.

Its certainly embarassing for the Yanks to have this beautiful new ballpark with the best seats in the house unfilled. Makes the place look dead on TV broadcasts. So what to do? Before you can answer that, we need some unpack a few things about the situation the Yanks are in.

The easiest thing to do would be to lower prices immediately. But that would mean that the guy in the $500 seat would be sitting next to someone who just paid half as much for the same section, which will certainly (and justifiably) make him upset. Others have suggested they can hand those seats away to big sponsors/charities. While that would fill those seats, it doesn’t help the Yanks with their balance sheet, except for some possible tax write offs that wouldn’t be realized anytime soon.

My suggestion is as follows. Call the season ticket holders who purchased the seats at full price and offer them the opportunity to purchase a limited amount of seats at a substantial discount. You’ll need to limit the number of seats initially so everyone gets a crack at it. That will raise some cash for the Yanks on their unsold inventory and placate the people who’ve already paid full price by effectively lowering the price per seat they paid. For example, someone with two $300 seats who purchases another two at $150 has now lowered the price per seat to $225 per game. I’ve heard many people call in to radio shows who have those seats who said they had to cut back on the number of seats they bought this year due to the price increases. This would give them the chance to get back in at a price that works for them. Also, at those prices they may be able to defray some of the costs on the secondary market by selling off the high demand games against the Red Sox and Mets. Depending on how successful this is, the Yanks could go back for another round of discounted seats without any limitation, and the brokers should soak up any remaining seats.

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Meet the new boss. . .

Posted by Steve S. at 8:08 am 3 Responses »
Mar 282009

. . . who’s the same as the old boss.

In recent years, as George Steinbrenner has faded from view as the principal owner, Levine has emerged as the strongest voice of the Yankees, baseball’s wealthiest team. He is their executive-as-prosecutor, a tough, short-tempered and smart protector of the Steinbrenner family and the Yankees brand.

“If you attack me unfairly, there are no free shots,” Levine said.

No other Yankees executive — not Steinbrenner’s sons, Hal and Hank; Brian Cashman, the general manager; or Lonn Trost, the chief operating officer — is as willfully aggressive.

“Part of Randy likes to fight,” said Hal Steinbrenner, the managing general partner. “He has a history of not backing down. He likes to be the bad cop. I’m the good cop.”

The family has never asked Levine to restrain his style. Hal Steinbrenner said he “absolutely” applauded Levine’s castigations of Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a persistent critic of the stadium’s financing. Levine has angrily accused Brodsky, a Westchester County Democrat, of attacking the Yankees name for political ends.

Levine’s occasionally choleric behavior is not an act, he said, but evidence that he can change speeds on his rhetorical pitches.

“I get angry, but I try not to let anger color my job,” he said.

The brusque Brodsky says he sees Levine as “someone who thinks the world responds to bullying and verbal violence.” After a public hearing at which Levine, 54, turned red while yelling at him, Brodsky said: “He couldn’t have been acting. His face was too purple.”

For fans lamenting the increasingly distant presence of George Steinbrenner, Randy Levine is your man. By his own admission, Hal takes a more distant administrative role. Nobody’s really sure what Hank does, we just all hope he doesn’t do too much of it.

By most accounts, Levine was the driving force behind the building of the new stadium,  the creation of the YES Network and Joe Torre’s dismissal/contract offer. He is the main reason why the Yankees enjoy the financial advantages they have today, which only appear to be growing despite the bad economy. Just as with George, whether you love him or hate him, Yankee fans should be thankful he’s working for us.

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