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January 19, 2009
If it's Monday, the Yankees must be lying spinning
City tabloid sports columnists have no illusions about who's really paying for the new Yankee Stadium. Why is it that sports columnists seem to grasp injustice a lot faster than Metro beat writers?
NY Daily News, Yankee Stadium and Citi Field are the Houses That You Built
Mike Lupica, whose b.s. detector is as sharp as anyone's in the New York media, sums up the Yankees' subterfuge in a must-read column.
For the last time, the Yankees aren't building a new Yankee Stadium for the Bronx because it is the poorest Congressional district in the country. And they aren't building it for you anymore than the Mets are with Citi Field. This isn't about a grand slam home run for the city's economy. It is a grand slam for these baseball teams.
Yankees president Randy Levine - whom Hal Steinbrenner has somehow allowed to become the angry face and threatening voice of his organization - likes to scream about lies and distortions. He ought to know. You can start here: That the Yankees moved across the street as some sort of public service. They didn't. New ballparks and new arenas are never public services and never help the taxpayers, not in the Bronx, not in Queens, not in the Meadowlands.
Not anywhere.
NY Post, STADIUM WATCHDOG DESERVES ANSWERS
Post columnist Phil Mushnick isn't buying what Yankees president Randy Levine is peddling.
Says here that in the throes of a crisis that demands fiscal accountability, Westchester Assemblyman Richard Brodsky's call for a full accounting of New York's financing of the new Yankee Stadium should have been met by both Mayor Bloomberg and Yankee president Randy Levine with this: "Anything you want, and right away. We've nothing to hide."
Instead, Levine and the mayor's office threw a name-calling hissy fit, accusing Brodsky of political grandstanding, and, sounding more like John Sterling than John Sterling, accusing him of treason for trying to do dirt to the citizens of New York by asking none-of-his-business questions about New York's deal with the New York Yankees!
Levine said that Brodsky's "behavior in trying to hurt the people of this city is disgraceful." Indeed!
How dare anyone question a $370 million shortfall in the original estimate of public financing for the Yankees!
WFAN/YES Network, Francesa on the Fan
Levine keeps pushing the prevarication with WFAN radio host Mike Francesa, including this novel explanation for the massive taxpayer contribution to a new Yankee Stadium.
"For years and years, in the Bronx, people were complaining that the parkland in the Bronx was not adequate. So as part of this arrangement, the Yankees pay for the stadium, the city is building the infrastructure. So the city is building new and additional parkland.... The city are building beautiful brand-new parks."
Yup, it's all about the parkland — ballpark land, that is.
Posted by eric at January 19, 2009 4:48 PM