A few weeks ago, the New York Times’ Harvey Araton covered the sad case of Bears & Eagles Stadium in Newark, NJ, home field for the Can-Am League’s Newark Bears, and a venue that rarely hosted more than a couple of hundred paying customers this season. With the Yankees needing to renovate their International League affilate’s ballpark in Scranton, PA next season, the relocate the Bombers’ Triple A franchise to Newark for a single season was proposed. Proving yet again that when it comes to shitty public relations, the Mets aren’t satisfied with merely playing out the string, the Star-Ledger’s Jerry Izenberg exposes an Amazin’ blunder that’s tough for even a Yankee hater to defend.
Under baseball’s rules, the exclusivity of the Yankees and Mets territory is shared. The Yankees called the Mets and asked permission to put their Triple-A team in Newark for only a single year.
The Mets declined.
The Yankees tried once more. They repeated that this was just for a single year. They said that if the Mets agreed for just that one season they would offer an evergreen matching proposal. In essence, they would give the Mets the same shot if they had a team with a minor league park in jeopardy, no matter how many eons into the future.
The Mets declined, saying their organization would only do something like that with mutual and immediate reciprocity as they did with the Yanks when they put a minor league team in Brooklyn and allowed the Yanks to do the same on Staten Island.
One of the concerns that influenced the Mets was their belief that a minor league team in Newark might have weaned potential Mets fans away from the affluent New Jersey suburbs.
Last night, a Mets spokesman confirmed that the team blocked the move, and would only say the decision was within the team’s rights.
Too bad, so sad. Like the Yankees would make any concession to the Mets. Nope. Too bad for Newark, but eh, collateral damage.
The Mets’ decision makes perfect sense to me. The Mets are struggling at the gate and many of their fans do come from New Jersey. Why should they help the Yankees–who do nothing at all the help the Mets–and risk further hurting their attendance at CitiField.
So the Mets are openly admitting that people would rather see the AAA Yankees than the Mets major league team? LOL! Talk about poor self esteem!
if a one-year residency of the Yankees taxi league squad in downtown Newark is a real threat to Mets attendance, they have no business being in business. Aside from the indifference towards a town that could really use a break, one of these days the Mets might well consider making Coney Island the home of their Eastern League affiliate instead of Binghamton. When that day arrives, I wouldn’t presume the Yankees will be particularly willing to look the other way.