When the New York Yankees played playoff games at old Yankee Stadium two things were certain.
One, there would be no empty seats in the house and two, it would be impossible to have a conversation with the person next to you due to the fact that fans were louder than a rock concert.
But then something happened to old Yankee Stadium: It got blown up.
The "New" Yankee Stadium is beautiful. It has a steak house, private suites, a museum, a Hard Rock café and a private bar in centerfield. But one thing the stadium is lacking these days: passionate fans.
It's not to say that there are no passionate fans in Yankee Stadium, but they are in short supply compared to the glory days of the Yankees. For the most part these days, seats are filled with corporate tickets, business people from the city and fans that just aren't as loud or into the games as they used to be. Or the seats are just empty.
A common site at Yankee games this year and during the playoffs are the glaringly empty seats behind home plate.
Obviously the absolutely atrocious play of the team during the playoffs has contributed to the dwindling attendance, but the team themselves haven't done much to help matters either.
As reported by Jeff Passan at Yahoo! Sports:
"For the second consecutive playoff game, swaths of empty seats filled Yankee Stadium, entire rows without a single fan. And on Saturday night, instead of letting them sit embarrassingly open for Game 1 of the ALCS, ushers were told to fill them with fans from other sections."
"At the old stadium, a playoff game, Saturday night, it was electric. It was a zoo," said Charles Weimer, 33, of Staten Island, who was sitting in the sixth row of 334. "There were guys in jersey-shirts, drinking $8 beers. They're gone, and I don't know if they're going to come back. Your $10 tickets are $50 tickets now."
There were also reports about unsold tickets to Game 2 for the Yankees, including thousands that were still available on the secondary market. According to Darren Rovell at ESPN.com, "From 8 a.m. ET to 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, approximately 500 tickets to the game were sold on StubHub, but that still left 6,800 tickets on the resale market."
Making matters even worse, Yankees president Randy Levine blamed the issues on StubHub.
"As I've said, we have significant issues with StubHub and it has been affecting our attendance in a negative way all year," Levine said. "We expect that to be resolved after the season."
Later in Passan's article he describes the pricing of the tickets as one reason for the attendance issues:
"Indeed, the face-value ticket prices are exorbitant. Seats for Sunday's Game 2 against the Detroit Tigers are available on the Yankees' website for between $113 and $688. The Legends Seats - behind home plate and the surrounding areas - range from $860 to $1,715. A spokesman for Major League Baseball said the league offers a variety of potential ticket prices to each team, which then chooses its desired pricing for its LCS home games."
Leaving aside the unsold tickets, empty seats and less-than-passionate fans, there is another aspect to Yankee Stadium that has faltered in recent seasons: the Fear Factor.
When opposing players came to Yankee Stadium for the playoffs, the atmosphere would be intense, with fans cheering and players faltering under the pressure of October. But now, after attendance has been dropping and the Yankees have forgotten how to hit, that air of magic and intensity has fallen away from the new Yankee Stadium.
Take it from Detroit Tigers outfielder Quintin Berry, who spoke to Yahoo about the atmosphere at the stadium:
"This is a very easy place to play now," Tigers outfielder Quintin Berry said, according to Yahoo. "Coming from Oakland, the fans there were so rowdy. It was easier to come here."
According to Rovell: "The Yankees drew 3.54 million fans this year, second most in baseball only behind the Philadelphia Phillies but the team's lowest total regular-season attendance since 2003."
The Yankees can change everything by doing one thing: winning a game against the Tigers.
Fans have been frustrated by the inability of high-priced players like Alex Rodriguez, Curtis Granderson, Mark Teixiera and Robinson Cano to hit. Now that Captain Derek Jeter is lost for the playoffs for the first time in his career with a fractured ankle, the team will be leaning on those players more than ever.
The only shining light of the series so far has been Raul Ibanez hitting home runs and the play of Ichiro Suzuki. The two former Seattle Mariners nearly bailed out the Yankees in Game 2 by hitting two-run home runs in the bottom of the ninth, but it wasn't enough to pull out the win.
If the Yankees get swept in this series there will be some serious questions heading into the offseason. But if the team can win a game and send the series back to Yankee Stadium one more time, they just might be able to bring that aura back once and for all.
