Yankee Stadium tickets hit $17K

By Pete Catapano | pcatapano@am-ny.com

March 4, 2008

A general view of the field during the home opener between Kansas City Royals and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium on April 11, 2006 in the Bronx. Tickets for the final regular season game at Yankee Stadium have hit $17,000. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Even Billy Crystal and Jerry Seinfeld might have a hard time seeing their New York teams send off their stadiums this fall.

Only New York fans with some luck and deep pockets will have a shot of scoring a ticket to the last regular season games ever at Yankee and Shea stadiums this fall.

Scalpers online are asking for nearly $6,000 for the Mets final Shea game on Sept. 28, while tickets have been seen as high as a whopping $17,000 for the Yanks Sept. 21 match-up against the Orioles. And if you want to see the first All-Star game this summer at Yankee Stadium since 1977, it'll take $25,000 to snag one ticket on the field championship level.

"Since the game went on sale and sold out (on Feb. 20) the demand is insane," said Moe Schlachter, who's asking for at least $3,800 for his pair of championship box seats. He said that since posting his Yankees tickets on Craigslist last week, he has already gotten 20 to 30 responses.

The 22-year-old student guessed that if the Yankees don't make the playoffs -- ensuring that the Sept. 21 game would indeed be the last at the House that Ruth Built -- the prices to resell tickets could quadruple.

Face-value field championship box seats at the stadium range from $240 to $380.

While the Yankees finale sold out in 11 minutes, Mets fans can still swipe a ticket for the Sept. 28 home game against the Marlins through special packages. The most expensive seat being offered for either game was from a bold stubhub.com hawker asking $16,791 each for his Tier Box MVP seats, which normally go for about $70. Since last year, ticket scalping in New York has been legal.

While the nearly $17,000 price sounds outlandish, there were plenty of single seats advertised on the site for at least $5,000. Other upper deck seats were found on eBay for $600 a pair yesterday afternoon with upwards of 21 bids. Also a pair of right-field bleacher seats were priced at $885 after 47 bids.

While some fans said they are willing to pony up big dollars for the hometeams' regular season finales because the stadium celebrations will be worth the investment, others are dismayed that the price of a baseball game has soared to out of reach of an average New Yorker.

"I would not pay 100 bucks for a game just because of the stadium." Said Bryan Goski, an Upper East Side, Yankee fan. "These games used to be for the people of New York, but now no one can afford them."

Tickets for other games throughout the year will be hard to come by for both teams. Some fans reported having trouble finding anything online last Friday when single-game ticket sales for the Yanks started. Monday, fans took another shot at the box office. The Mets, who had a lottery to register for the final game of the season, will offer the single-game ticket sales starting March 9.

"There's enormous interest and demand in baseball in the city with eight million people buying tickets to games last year and that number will only grow this year," said a Mets spokesman, who added that the Amazin's is expected to surpass the four million attendance mark for the first time this year.

The festivities at the regular season finales will still be worth it to many fans, some say, even if the teams have more home games in the playoffs.

"They will be celebrating the stadiums in those games," said Joe McDonald, managing editor of New York Sports Scene Magazine. "This is the last time to celebrate the stadium. That's the important thing."

"It's supply and demand," he said. "If someone wants to go out there and pay to $17,000 a ticket, God bless them, I'd rather stay at home."

The Yankees didn't return calls for comment yesterday.