A fruit stand grows in the Bronx

The Yankee Stadium Farmers Market on a cold April day. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

I first saw this odd fruit stand right inside Gate 4 at the new Yankee Stadium on a cold day in April, and it seemed fairly gimmicky to me. After all, bananas were two for $3, and both navel oranges and Anjou pears carried the same price tag. For nearly one-third the price, I could just grab a banana at the fruit store on the way to the subway before heading up to the game.

Yet, over the course of the season, these fruit stands have become quite successful, and yesterday, The Times’ Manny Fernandez explored the stadium fruit stand phenomenon. Apparently, fans turned off by the high prices — and more importantly, the high calorie counts — of the regular stadium fare are turning to the fruit stand for relief.

At Yankee Stadium this week, in the entrance hall just beyond Gate 4, the fruits were arranged in baskets and trays on a wooden pushcart and on two other displays. It is a place of only-in-New York moments: men and women, some in Yankee pinstripes, shorts and sneakers, some holding tall half-empty cups of beer, squeezing fruit and asking if the peaches were fresh.

Several customers said the stand was a pleasant surprise. In the third inning of a game on Tuesday against the Texas Rangers, Randy Ian Brandoff, 33, an executive at a private jet company, had trouble deciding between a nectarine and a peach, and walked away with one of each. A few minutes later, Ronnie and Carole Meyer, a retired couple from Bloomington, Minn., bought two bananas. “There’s too much greasy food,” said Mrs. Meyer, 64, adding that she and her husband would probably have bought popcorn had they not found the fruit stand.

Angela Mangels, 31, a health-conscious architect from Long Island, was not planning to eat anything at the stadium. “I don’t normally buy anything at ball fields,” she said. She bought two nectarines, an apple and a banana at the stand for $6.

As Fernandez relates, the fruit isn’t as local as one would prefer. The stand is run by a Los Angeles-based fruit importer and distributor, and the fruit is shipped in from Washington, California, Oregon and even New Zealand. “I’m thrilled that it’s there,” Michael Hurwitz, the head of New York’s very successful Greenmarket program, said. “I just think that there’s a great opportunity to support our regional economy and our regional growers, particularly in this economy. You could have New York State apples, you could have New York State peaches, you could have New York State pears.”

The company, Melissa’s Produce, defended its cross-country shipping by citing the weather. A spokesman said that fall may bring some local apples as well.

Meanwhile, the fruit stand sells around 200 pounds of produce a game, and even at a mark-up of nearly 300 percent in some cases, that’s still an impressive total. Who would have thought we’d see the day a fruit stand thrives inside a baseball stadium?