The interesting thing about this, and despite my being a Yankee hater I fully support this decision on Steinbrenner's part, is that it helps the Yankees in one big way.

The costs that go into the planning etc of the new stadium actually reduce the amount of revenues the Yankees are considered to have in revenue sharing.

In essence the new stadium project will allow them to give less money to the "small market" teams.

While I'm all for competitive balance, and I'd personally like to see a salary cap in baseball, it's quite clear that some teams *cough*DevilRays*cough* are misusing their revenue sharing awards.

I'd say, "Maybe you'd feel differently if you lived in NYC and had to help pay for that $135 million the city's putting forward for it", but you're a Yankees fan, so you probably can overlook that.

I still hate the Yankees as much as ever, but Tim and I have already talked about needing to make a pilgrimage there before the stadium is gone.

This is not an entirely new plan. In fact, the Yankees revealed much of this plan in 2001 before the attack on the World Trade Center. The main difference is the use of the current field for community / youth leagues, instead of the parking lot originally announced. Of course, the Yankees still want more parking and a connection to the nearby Metro-North (suburban railroad) station, but those are minor details.

You may have noticed that the Mets are all of a sudden also getting a new ball park that will double as the Olympic Stadium. Guess what? That was also first revealed in 2001, only this time they're going to get the stadium so the city can use it for the Olympics (if by some slim chance they get the right to host).

Of course, with tickets starting at $12 to sit in the bleachers and $18 to sit in the "I claim these seats for the earth" section of the current ballpark, you don't think George Steinbrenner will want to raise the prices in the new ballpark, do you? :-)

It's a whole lot better than the $500+ million that the Mariners scalped the citizens of Seattle for when I was living there. Sheesh, they spent about $135 million just repairing the Kingdome roof before tearing it down a year or two later.

I have noticed though, that the really vile period of stadium projects are mostly old history. No longer do you really hear proposals to build new mega baseball stadiums in the suburbs at freeway interchanges. Now there is at least an attempt to create interesting buildings in city neighborhoods.

And baseball stadiums are far better than football stadiums to have in a neighborhood if you want re-development. For that reason alone, NYC will be much better off with new stadiums for the Yankees and Mets rather than the proposed Jets stadium in Manhattan. That's because a football stadium only gets about 8 games/year, many of which are during late fall when weather can be poor. Football fans will often rather tailgate than frequent local bars and restaurants. Baseball stadiums on the other hand get 82 games/year during the months of best weather and so the foot traffic for bars, restaurants and shops will be 10-times greater.