Free Parking at TNYS, woohoo!

TNYS: The New Yankee Stadium

Oh wait, it's not for you and me? Drat!

Check out this very enlightening article by SI.com's John Rolfe. Namely:

This little anecdote came to mind when the New York Daily News reported that VIPs will get free valet parking at the new Yankee Stadium for the next 40 years while fans pay handsomely for the privilege of stowing their junkers, starting this year when the tag jumps from $14 to $17 and then to $19 when the new ballpark opens in 2009. The thumb in the eye is that rates could go as high as $35 per jalopy by 2014.

I just hope that MetroNorth stop is operational by then.

Oh yeah, then there's this tidbit which makes the Yanks' brass look pretty smart:

In addition to the public subsidies and billions of dollars of increased revenue, the Yankees will benefit from a change to Major League Baseball's 2002 collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which allows teams to deduct new-stadium building costs from the revenue-sharing payments they make.

For the Yankees, whose $200 million player payroll makes them the largest contributor to the revenue-sharing pool, this means 40 percent of their share of the price tag may be borne by the remaining 29 baseball teams. All told, the Yankees and the taxpayers can each expect to pay about $450 million, with the remaining costs to be shared among the other baseball teams. (emphasis mine)

[EDIT: Read that again! The other teams have to pay for almost HALF of the Yank's share. Nice work, Randy Levine & crew. Too bad we, the taxpayers, have to carry the rest of the load.]