The first-place Yankees open a homestand tomorrow night against the Boston Red Sox, and the Yankee advisory for attending a game in Yankee Stadium, in clear if unspoken terms, includes wearing armor. If that's in storage, then helmet and flak jacket. Remember fans, there are animals out there.
The Yankee advisory might have a shot at being funny if it weren't so detestable.
Yankee officials, including and especially that resident of Tampa, Fla., George Steinbrenner, complain about the relatively low attendance but have done everything possible to discourage fans from coming. They alert them to the "perception of crime" in the area, as they state it, and, in effect, say come to Yankee Stadium at your peril.
"It's preposterous," said Sgt. Joe Gallagher, a spokesman in the office of the Deputy Police Commissioner of New York City. "The area around Yankee Stadium during the day or night of an event is one of the safest in New York City. The statistics bear it out. Crime concerning fans there is infinitesimal."
"I couldn't agree more," said Chief Rafael Piniero, the commanding officer in the Bronx. "No robberies were reported last year involving fans at Yankee games and just one this year, and then three men were immediately arrested.
"And you're talking about an area in which there have been one million fans coming and going from the 37 ball games at the stadium in April, May and June, which are our last detailed statistics."
"There were no robberies reported at the Yankee Stadium subway stop last year and there was just one robbery complaint this year," said Lieut. Bob Valentino, a spokesman for the Transit Authority. "And this in a city in which there are four homicides and 700 felonies reported each day."
The Man from Tampa, who happens to be the principal owner of the Yankees, has been bad-mouthing the ball park, the neighborhood and the city for years now, ever since he figured he could make substantially more money by moving the team either out of state or out of borough.
And while he has eight years left on his stadium lease, he is impatient. He hopes somehow to blow out of the Bronx as soon possible. So his advertising -- positive advertising -- is kept at a minimum.
His vice president in charge of community relations, Richard Kraft, was quoted by New York magazine recently as saying that kids in Macombs Dam Park directly across from the stadium hang from the basketball rims "like monkeys" and routinely break them. This brought out not more fans but members of the National Rainbow Coalition to picket and denounce the Yankees for racial slurs. It also brought Kraft's resignation, under pressure.
But Kraft's reported remarks, at best insensitive, feed on the Yankees' business strategy to make fans fearful of attending games because of the perceived environment.
In other cities, teams advertise how great it is to come to the ball park and take in a game. In Chicago, for example, Cubs management promotes "the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field." They are a last-place team in an old park and they regularly sell out.
Also, Chicago Stadium is located in one of the worst neighborhoods in America. But the Bulls have sold out for years because they have had a good product and advertised it as such.
What the Yankees also don't tell fans is that a special detail of police, with its own office in the basement of the ball park, is assigned to Yankee Stadium every time there is a game. The detail consists of 60 police personnel. There are close to 40 officers from the nearby 44th Precinct who regularly patrol the area during games.
The Transit Authority has its Bronx headquarters at the 161st Street stop, beside Yankee Stadium. There are 24 Transit Authority security personnel assigned there.
That's close to 125 uniformed and plainclothes police and Transit Authority officers in about a half-mile radius of Yankee Stadium. A fan appears in less danger of getting mugged in the environs of the ball park than having his foot stepped on by one of the 10 dozen cops patrolling there.
Also, as Sgt. Gallagher noted, it is no more dangerous to go to Yankee Stadium than it is to visit Shea Stadium. That is, it's hard to get a crime statistic that is much lower than infinitesimal. Shea is also heavily policed. And when was the last time you heard Fred Wilpon, president of the Mets, urge fans to be wary of the horrors around Shea?
Parking, though, as Steinbrenner says, can be a problem at Yankee Stadium, but it is not impossible. And the Yankees had the same problems throughout the 1970's and 80's, when the team was drawing well over two million a year. In 1988, when the team finished fifth, it drew a record 2,633,701 fans for the season.
The city is willing to remedy the parking problem. As for traffic jams, another Yankee complaint, there are traffic jams at every ball park, including the Meadowlands, which Steinbrenner is eyeing.
But the nerve of Steinbrenner! Yankee Stadium is like the Statue of Liberty or Radio City or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's a landmark. It helps define the city and has for much of this century. But to have one man, a Tampa resident, try to bully the city over it, and try to con us, too, is not only infuriating, it's insulting.
Most New Yorkers I know feel the same way: Get out of our sight, George. In the end, instead of our politicians kissing his ringed fingers, they'd prefer the Yankees gone and our dignity maintained.
