We apologize for the lack of content over the past few months. Life happens…but we have still been watching, and we intend on updating this on a far more frequent basis.
After watching this last series in Boston, I have mixed feelings. I am not overly concerned but I must say it’s awfully frustrating thinking about all those “Red Sox Nation” dopes (and 90% of ESPN) walking around with their chests pumped up.
Going into another soggy series with the Mets tonight and I think our chances are good. The Mets are hurt and playing sloppy baseball.
On a side note…how in god’s name does Swisher jump into the stands and lose his hat, yet the killer edge-up stays crisp as hell?
Let’s Go Bombers.
Since when did a day at the park become a gourmet event? I know that a lot has been written about the skyrocketing cost of going to a game in this lousy economy but some of the amenities and “upgrades” the Yankees and other big market teams have made leave me scratching my head. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Yankees have created their own concession company named Legends Hospitality Management, which will focus on more “high end”, “locally themed” food. The Yanks have also promised dishes cooked up by Food Network personalities. It’s well documented that the Yankees sell their luxury box seats and other lower tier seats to corporations in advance, which guarantees a certain amount of ticket revenue before the first pitch is thrown. However, the recession has messed with the Yankees’ marketing plans:
“If the economy were certain these would have sold out in about six seconds,” Yankees chief operating officer Lonn Trost told the Wall Street Journal, while showing off the $500+ a piece Legends Club.
“The problem is, people don’t want to be seen in a space like this.”
Those “people” who could afford those tickets before the economic down-turn, are now beginning to be alienated, alongside other working class joe-blow characters that have been dishing out far too much for years. Sure you can get bleacher tickets fairly cheap and I understand that in order to put a great product on the field (at least in management’s eyes) you need to spend a lot of money in order to generate revenue through ticket sales, advertising, and thousands of other avenues.
My question is, why make the new stadium akin to Tavern on the Green, when most fans would love nothing more than a dirty-water dog and an ice-cold beer for under 15 bucks? Why make going out to enjoy our American pastime a seemingly less personal experience than it has already become? I love great food and enjoy cool bells and whistles, but I would rather leave those things out of my trip to the ball park. After all, what is the focus here? Remember the silly game they play on that mind-blowingly expensive field? Are you trying to impress the corporate big wigs and their guests who are at the game to be seen and to rub shoulders with fellow socialites with equally deeper pockets? The answer is probably yes, and that’s really sad.
I say instead of Food Network, bring in tons of local business owners, and have them setup a festival-type lineup of concessions serving the best New York has to offer. Instead of “locally themed” dishes you would enjoy “local dishes” served by real people who need the money to feed their families and put a roof over their head, not to buy a new hot tub or 5-series. This way, visitors to New York, could experience all the incredible culture and diverse array of ethnic foods that make living in New York different than any other city in the country. Say you have a family from Europe who has never been to a baseball game and never been to New York. Instead of offering “gourmet” dishes prepared by your own hospitality management company, you give them options from all around the 5 boroughs. Pizza from Brooklyn, Spanish cuisine from the Bronx, Greek food from the Lower East Side, middle eastern from Staten Island, or Japanese food from Queens.
As far revenue is concerned, The Yanks could take a (small) percentage of the profits made during a game, which may be fair as it’s likely over the course of a game many local owners would feed more patrons than they would on a normal week night. Instead of creating sterilized corporate management companies to offer up over-priced soulless food, how about you invite in the people who are the heartbeat of the city of New York, and true fans that live and die by the pinstripes.
I’m no corporate thinker, but I know a move like this would do wonders for the Yankees who are trying to show their fans a new stadium representing the future of the franchise. I know the Yankees are a brand, but can’t they be more like Taco Bell and less like Wal-Mart? One leaves me bloated with a smile on my face and the other leaves me depressed and yearning for something genuine and comforting. Come on Yanks, we’re waiting on your version of the Crunch Wrap Supreme, a great idea that leaves us saying “Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?”.
From time to time we here at Evil Empire 2.0 get an odd feeling—an itch you might call it. We’re not sure what it is, but it might be “friendliness.” Well, we got one of these feelings today and decided to open up our forum to another voice: thag00se. Here we go, guest spot #1 (of maybe many… contact us if you’d like to do a guest spot):
Boston.
This word has little meaning for the majority of Americans. It’s just another city along the Eastern Seaboard. But for Yankee fans everywhere, this word conjures up deep feelings: hatred, angst, pride, a little (or a lot) more hatred, and for this Yankee fan a memory or two—a story of endurance.
It’s sacrilege, but I as a Yankee fan went to college in Boston and spent 5 long years there. A momentary lapse of high school judgment planted me in the rival city.
Upon first glance it’s a city just like any other, but if you spend more than a day here you’ll see strange things. For example, the insanity of a gaggle of Red Sox fans running through the streets, screaming at the top of their lungs when their team wins, or riots and burning cars in the streets for a Division Championship, or my personal favorite: the endless and never changing “Yankees Suck” chants up-and-down Landsdowne Street (can they come up with anything better? It isn’t even that insulting).
But not only do you see strange things while living in Boston, but something strange happens to you. A primitive instinct kicks in and you somehow manage to find more of your kind—even if you aren’t trying to. You flock together like a group of lion cubs trying to avoid the prowling hyenas. If one of you strays from the pack… well, only whatever god you pray to can help, because it is always open season on Yankees fans. The hyenas attack from the shadows. No matter how well-versed you are in how much better the Yankees are than the Red Sox and how New York is than Boston there is no hope of turning a group of blood-thirsty Bostonians away with logic.
You must endure insane roommates who spend $900 dollars on a piece of sod from Fenway Park to stick in their lawn, the random people on the street yelling at you if you don any kind of NY garb at all. And you had better make sure that your NY plates are covered up when there is a big game or you are parked in a garage because your car could be the one flipped over on the street or set ablaze.
I survived all the tests of living in Boston and thankfully escaping was easy for me. Boston just doesn’t measure up on anything—from Pizza and Chinese food, to bars and the strangely run T system—which stops running at 12:30 am (why?). New York called me back and I am now a much happier Yankee fan living in Brooklyn where I can proudly wear my Yankee hat and stare down anyone I see wearing a Red Sox one.
Well, I can surely say New York is glad to have you back! Great post thag00se!
Yesterday, Dr. Seuss would have turned 105 years old. This got me thinking about hats. Namely baseball hats and how many I have managed to acquire over the years. Baseball caps hold a special place in some fans’ hearts and become almost a partner in crime for all things relating to their lives and their teams. I know that over the years I have owned numerous Yankees hats but this last one (pictured below) has been through the most. Not only has this baby suffered through countless post-season defeats, but it’s also come along for many other adventures over the past 6 years.
In order for a hat to really be broken in and cherished in that unique way a few things must happen. First, sweat, and a lot of it, allows the hat to form into a perfectly molded cover for your dome. The repeated process of moistening and drying allows for optimal personalization. I would say two summers worth before the hat truly reaches its zenith of stench/awesomeness. Here’s Joe of E.E. 2.0’s hat which is well on it’s way to becoming a potent, and I do mean potent accessory to his die hard love of the pinstripes:
Another factor which plays into this important process is repeated throws when your opponent rips a double down the line with two men on to put your team down by 2 in the 9th. One of my favorite moves is the hat-punt which much like the throw, can be used during both celebrations and expressions of frustration. Thirdly, I think the hat must be temporarily lost. I never noticed how much I valued my Yankee hats until one day while getting ready to go out or flip on the game, I found myself lifting up couches and tearing through my car looking for my faded blue buddy. The panic which sets in at times like these is unprecedented. (Think of Tom Hanks in “Castaway” upon losing his pineapple-volleyball friend “Wilson”.)
Upon finding the hat, I once again realized that the piece of cloth adorned with the beloved inter-locking NY was not just a hat, but a lighthouse of sanity in an ever more complicated and confusing world. As Joe has already mentioned the Yanks love to put their name on anything and everything so their logo is seen just about everywhere. People rock NY hats of all shapes and sizes regardless of if they follow the team or have even been to a game. So what makes this small piece of merchandise such a meaningful symbol of my love for my team and the Rolodex of memories associated with the Yankees?
Why am I waxing poetic about a baseball cap? Well, this baby has been through a lot with me. Just check the list of things it has endured: Paint, oil, gasoline, sunscreen, both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, that pond on the 14th hole at La Costa, blood (my own), a Giants Super bowl Victory and subsequent drunken celebration, L.A. traffic, Iron Maiden concerts (two), beers (foreign, domestic, and bar-floor flavored), the Hudson River, old stadium bleachers, road trip to Florida, and Kei Igawa, just to name a few.
So as we approach yet another summer full of baseball, take a look at your favorite hat, and think of all the things good and bad, that it has been through with you. I bet it makes you think twice about running out to Lids and getting the new Pink and green “throwback”.
In every NY Sports section or blog there’s tons of drama and back-and-forth going on about the Inaugural Season hats: should they have added a patch or not, to the side of the hat or the back, and why is it so big? These questions circulate and circulate, building pressure against or for the hats. From my own unscientific browsing of blog comments the overwhelming consensus is ”wtf, why?!”
But rather than explain my opinion on the hats I’d much rather explore the circumstances which manifested the controversial piece of apparel. I do deal with marketing types everyday as a Graphic Designer.
So let’s first consider this from a marketing perspective. In this hypothetical situation you’re on a marketing team for the Yankees (wearing a mighty fine suit btw), and you get the sales numbers from accounting and notice a large spike in hat sales. That must have been why you got that fat raise.
As an astute marketer you delve deep into the figures and see what hats sold the best—ah-ha the All-Star Game hats. That certainly makes sense. Well you have to build on last years sales (if you expect another fat raise). Again looking at the numbers you conclude that since more people buy hats than jerseys, you will push for the Yankees product design team to put together an inaugural season hat worthy of hype and customers hard-earned dollars.
The idea is shipped off to the design team…
So now you’re a designer and you have to create another best-selling hat. People already overwhelmingly prefer your patch to that Dominos Pizza look-alike the Mets did, so you’re riding high. You have to out-do them again. They’ll probably do a left-side patch and play it safe after the non-traditional uniform patch backfired.
You deduce that the Yankees have to do this thing big, and then it hits you: why not put the patch on the back of the hat? It will have a greater balance with the front without having a random thing stuck on the side, so yeah, you’ll incorporate it into the back of the hat; front and back just like that.
You think you’re really on to something: if people choose to wear it flipped backwards a-la Griffey Jr. in his heyday, it will still advertise the Yankees, and hell, on TV you mostly see the backs of the players heads, more free advertising for the hat—and your design.
So into design you go, and then you realize you have to deal with the MLB logo…”damn!” you think to yourself, that logo has to be there, and at the standard size too or MLB will come down hard on you. The Yankees are your priority though, so they have to be larger and more important-looking than the MLB logo. When you’re done, the final patch looks pretty big for a back-of-the-hat, but then you rationalize it again because some people will wear it backwards. “DONE!” you proclaim, and schedule a meeting with marketing.
In the meeting you explain how this has never been done before, it’s constant product advertisement, and the dual-use angle as well. Marketing is sold! Into production it goes…
So there we have it, my guess at how the hat came to be.
My opinion about them: well, I don’t mind them, in fact I’m bordering on liking them, and once you see them on the field, you might like them too—as long as the team wearing them is winning.
- Joe G.
Jorge! Or maybe in his case, its shoulder shoulder (hurr hurr hurr). On the first pitch against an opposing professional pitcher that he saw this preseason, Posada smacked the ball for a solo shot – I’d qualify that as an auspicious beginning for his bounceback campaign. He then went on to prove it was more than just luck after he hit another ball hard in his next AB for a ground-rule double and drove in Xavier Nady for the 2nd run of the game – the score remained 2-0 for the duration of his presence in his lineup. The Yanks went on to win 5 – 1 against the rival Rays.
Its great to see Jorge with a bat in his hands again and show that he hasn’t lost his power stroke. So long as his defensive play is acceptable and he’s able to keep the runners on first honest (and right now all signs point to yes) we’re in good shape. It goes to show you how important Posada is to this team, even if he’s a stubborn with the pitchers at times, because it can be A LOT worse.
Yes it’s true, Evil Empire 2.0 has given in and joined the latest interned fad. Check us out.
We can only hope that this is how A-Rod responds to all the fans that will undoubtedly boo him this season. This reaction might even make them stop. Who knows, he might just have the season Ryan hoped for if this keeps up.
Yankees win over the Blue jays 6-1 in the first meaningless exhibition of the Spring. Here’s the boxscore.
You’ve just arrived in an alternate universe…everything is perfect here — you’ve left the political and financial disasters behind, back in that wretched place we like to call “reality.” We hope you’ve had a safe and pleasurable flight, here is your welcome gift of $300 trillion dollars and the keys to your private villa. Your chauffeur is pulling the Maybach around to the front as we speak.
Alright, now that we’ve set up where you are…Ryan and I often make insanely ridiculous predictions about the Yankees, mainly to see who can be more over-the-top. We thought maybe you’d like to get a glimpse into some of the crazier things that will never happen unless we really were in an alternate universe and were the proud owners of a Maybach and a private villa, so please join us in the insanity and help us dream even bigger in the comments.
So let’s get this show on the road with Alternate Universe Outlandishly Insane But Utterly Captivating Yankee Predictions for the 2009 season.
Ryan: I’ll start out with something nice and easy. In CC Sabathia’s first home start of the season he pitches a perfect game, while the Yankees score a healthy 10 runs – including back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back homers from Jeter, Texieira, Rodriguez, Matsui, and Posada in the first inning. Jeter’s homer is a two run blast since Damon’s first hit in the new stadium is a leadoff triple.
Joe: Ouch, that’s tough to follow up. One thing about that game though… you forgot to mention that during the top of the 5th inning CC will have a 600′ long Chicken Parmesan sub-sandwich delivered to Yankee Stadium and he’ll distribute it to the fans at 97 mph. He instantly wins the hearts and minds of every fan. A-Rod will think to himself “why didn’t my PR team think of that?”
