Yankees: Garber Garbled
Ooops, the Commish sticks his foot in his mouth:
NEW YORK (AP) -- Mention those empty seats at Yankee Stadium at your own risk.
Don Garber did.
A day after the Major League Soccer commissioner raised the subject, New York Yankees president Randy Levine blasted back.
"Don Garber discussing Yankee attendance must be a joke," Levine said Friday. "We draw more people in a year than his entire league does in a year. If he ever gets Major League Soccer into the same time zone as the Yankees, we might take him seriously.
"Hey Don, worry about Beckham, not the Yankees. Even he wants out of your league," he said.
David Beckham has been loaned from MLS' Los Angeles Galaxy to AC Milan through the end of the Italian Serie A season.
Speaking Thursday to the Associated Press Sports Editors, Garber said he'd noticed the unfilled seats at New York's two new stadiums. The Yankees' premium seats were more than half-empty for the five games following their home opener.
"It's incomprehensible that you watch a game, and there will be front-row seats empty," Garber said.
Told of Levine's comments, Garber explained his remark.
"When I mentioned the New York Yankees yesterday, my comments were part of a larger assertion that all businesses -- even the most successful sports entities -- are experiencing some impact from the economic downturn," Garber said through a league spokesman. "The Yankees are one of the world's strongest sports brands and the context of my comments about a few empty seats at Yankee Stadium was to illustrate the economic challenges we are all facing," he said.
MLS averaged 16,460 for 210 regular-season games last year, a total of 3.46 million. The Yankees averaged 53,070 last year in the final season at the old Yankee Stadium, a total of 4.3 million.
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Sportswriter Nick Green has written the 100 Percent Soccer column since 2005 for the Daily News, Daily Breeze and other Los Angeles area newspapers. The blog of the same name began in 2007. A native of England, he began writing about soccer in the mid-1980s and in 2000 permanently exchanged a seat in the stands for one in the press box. He lives six miles from Carson's Home Depot Center, home of the Los Angeles Galaxy, Chivas USA and the training headquarters for U.S. Soccer and is married to a long-suffering soccer widow. Join Nick on FaceBook and follow him on Twitter.
Sounds like someone feels threatened by the growth of soccer in this country....
And to put it in perspective---
Yankees 4.3 million attendance for approx. $210 million payroll
MLS 3.46 million attendance for approx. $50 million payroll
MLS spending about $15 per seat.
Yankees spending about $48 per seat.
No doubt, baseball's the bigger sport in the U.S.
For now.....
The only one who stuck his foot in his mouth is Levine.
What Garber said is perfectly fine.