This is a guest post by Ross at New Stadium Insider.

According to the always-handy NSI attendance tracker, the Yankees broke their single game attendance record at the new Yankee Stadium last night. We’re only halfway through the inaugural campaign, but it is significant that the Yankees reached the 49,000 mark without the benefit of selling standing room only tickets. Even with this large crowd in attendance, something was still missing.

From the moment we walked into the stadium, it was obvious that this crowd was different than others thus far in 2009. Scanning the majestic new structure, empty seats were few and far between, even in the hard to sell “Legends” seats. Impressively, there was only a smattering of Red Sox fans in attendance, a significant departure from recent installments of the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry in the Bronx.

As Michael Kay noted on last night’s television broadcast, it seemed that this was the first time that fans had come to see the game and not just to tour the facility. Kay, while eternally hyperbolic, made a valid point – if you walked around the stadium, you would have noticed shorter concession lines and a seating bowl that was filled to near-capacity.

It was definitely a relief to experience this “big game” atmosphere, especially after embarrassing new stadium debacles such as the Phillies series, when visiting fans took over and made themselves heard . However, we still have a bone to pick with Yankees fans, or perhaps even with the stadium. At the old Yankee Stadium – and other great home parks such as Fenway – crowd noise builds in anticipation of a big moment. So far in 2009, the new Yankee Stadium has had small bursts of overwhelming crowd noise, but those have typically been in response to a big moment. The wall of sound that engulfs you and makes you feel like you are a part of something truly special conspicuously absent.

We are left wondering whether that wall of sound will ever return. Is the significantly further recessed (and partially covered) upper deck to blame? Are the fans that can afford to attend games at the new Yankee Stadium even more corporate than the fans at the old one? Did the 6,000 – 7,000 extra seats in the old place make a huge difference in terms of crowd noise? We probably need to wait until the new Yankee Stadium hosts a playoff series to draw any reasonable conclusions, but as of now, we’re disappointed.

Tom Kaminski of WCBS 880 took a bunch of aerial photos of the ongoing demolition at the Old Yankee Stadium this morning. The seats are all gone as are most of the field level sections, but the dugout is still intact. Head on over and check the pictures out, just make sure no one at work will laugh at you if you cry.

(h/t Sliding Into Home)

Ever the popular topic, new Yankee Stadium has been much in the news lately. I have three stories to highlight today. So let’s just jump in.

Stadium could host bowl games
As anyone who has been subjected to the endlessly boring mid-inning interviews of college football coaches and athletic directors on YES broadcasts of recent Yankee games knows, new Yankee Stadium will be hosting a slate of college football games over the next few seasons. Today, the Daily News reports on something far bigger than just the compelling Rutgers/Army match-up. Yankee Stadium may host a bowl game.

According to Bill Madden, Yankee officials — including Hal Steinbrenner — have been talking with the higher-ups at the NCAA about reviving New York-based bowl games. The two sides are targeting a December 2011 date as the inaugural match-up. As Madden notes, old Yankee Stadium hosted the Gotham Bowl in 1962. While I’m frankly tired of hearing about Army’s sub-par football program coming to Yankee Stadium, a bowl game in New York, BCS or otherwise, would be exciting.

Meanwhile, Fack Youk offers up a dissenting opinion. While Yanks COO Lonn Trost continues to proclaim Yankee Stadium “not just a stadium for baseball,” the dimensions and design are such that a football field can’t really fit properly. Baseball stadiums just aren’t meant to host football games, Jay writes.

Yanks face stadium construction lawsuits
During the course of any major construction project, injuries — and subsequent lawsuits — are sure to mount, and new Yankee Stadium is no exception. As Dorian Block details today, a 28-year-old worker who lost the use of his hand in a handsaw accident last July is suing the team and Turner Construction. Marc Kemprowski alleges that the powersaw was missing a $1.50 safety guard. His suit is one of many the Yanks and Turner face over accidents during the construction of the new park.

Biking options few around new Stadium
As many of you know, I’m a big transit buff. My other blog focuses entirely around mass transit in New York City, and every now and then, transportation issues and baseball intersect. Late yesterday, Streetsblog’s Ben Fried explored biking to Yankee Stadium. Playing off a recent article in Sports Illustrated for Kids, Fried notes that bike parking around the new stadium is severely limited.

According to Sarah Braunstein’s piece for SI Kids, the nearest bike parking for Yankee Stadium is four blocks away in front of the Bronx County Supreme Court building. For comparison, Citi Field has ten bike parking racks right outside, and Wrigley Field and AT&T Park in San Francisco both offer secure indoor parking for bikes.

As a few Streetsblog commenters noted, Yankee Stadium isn’t exactly isolated. Three subway lines service the park during games, and a new Metro-North station sees three commuter rail lines pass through it. The stadium is also serviced by a ferry. Still, for those brave enough to bike to and park in the South Bronx, the Yankees probably should have found a way to host a bike rack or two. After all, the Yanks have been pushing the fact that Yankee Stadium is environmentally friendly. With Heritage Field set to open across the street in a few years, there is still plenty of time to make Yankee Stadium even more access-friendly.

Way back in RAB’s infancy, we were a bit miffed at restrictive policies during the seventh-inning stretch. Namely, that security guards and police officers would prevent people from entering the concourse during the daily rendition of God Bless America. In April we learned of a fan filing suit against the team. Today we learn the result.

Yes, it has taken a court settlement to determine that fans have the right to move about as Kate Smith’s voice blares over the PA. The settlement came down with the help of a federal judge in Manhattan. No longer will we worry about harassment when we just want to hit the head while there’s a slightly longer mid-inning break.

Of course, there were ways before to circumvent the policy. At the game last Wednesday, I started my walk to the bathroom as Andy Pettitte recorded the second out in the top of the seventh. Risky, of course, because the inning could have gone a bit longer. But in the end I relieved myself at the perfect time, returning to my seat just in time for Take Me Out To The Ball Game.

Hat tip Pinto.

Kevin Rozell at The Voice of Yankees Universe has a bunch of new photos up of the demolition of the Old Yankee Stadium, and there are even more at Demolition of Yankee Stadium. It’s so sad to see the old place go.

By all accounts, the Yankees had a very successful weekend at the gate. They averaged 47,988 fans per game and drew 143,966 over the weekend. Those figures represent the highest three-day total and best three-game average in the short history of new Yankee Stadium.

Yet, as the Subway Series unfolded, I couldn’t help but think about the 21,000 fans who didn’t get to see the Mets and Yankees in person this weekend. Prior to this weekend, the Yankees and Mets were averaging around 55,522 fans per Subway Series game at Yankee Stadium. Just once — a make-up game on a Sunday in June 2004 — did the teams fail to draw at least 54,978 fans.

On its surface, the low attendance numbers aren’t surprising. After all, new Yankee Stadium has a capacity that is 4500 seats fewer than the ballpark across the street did. What is surprising though is that the three games against the Mets weren’t up to that capacity. The Yankees didn’t draw the 52,325 fans they claim can fit into the new stadium, and even omitting the 2000 standing room-only tickets, they weren’t even within 2,000 fans of the 50,325 non-SRO capacity crowd.

Prior to the weekend showdown, Mark Feinsand published a short piece on this very issue. He wrote:

Through the first 29 games in the Bronx, the Yankees have had only one sellout in their new $1.5 billion palace, all the way back on Opening Day. Last season the Yankees sold out 58 of their 81 home games. Even that crowd was announced at 48,271, well short of the stadium’s listed capacity of 52,325. The team said that the remainder of the tickets had been given out as comps, so they didn’t count toward the official total…

“Since the price was dropped, sales have been good, combined with the fact the team has won,” a person familiar with the Yankees’ ticket sales said. “Sales have gotten better day to day. It (the price reductions) did work. Plus, the team is winning and that helps.”

The person added that 88% of all seats available to be sold for the entire season have been sold, though the remaining 12% presumably include many of the most expensive seats. Still, if Yankees-Mets can’t bring a full house, what series can?

The real issue remains, of course, the high-priced tickets. The Yanks won’t hit a capacity crowd until all of the luxury suites and all of the Legends Suites tickets are accounted for. We’re still waiting for that day to come this year, and if I had to bet, I’d put money those seats costing less next year.

For now, the Yankees continue on in the economic experiment in sports ticketing that is new Yankee Stadium. The seats for key series will be empty, and those of us who didn’t have the chance to buy tickets will just have to live with the jarring sight of empty Yankee Stadium seats when the Mets (and Red Sox) are in town.

On the eve of Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, I wrote a piece about the shape of the field at the new park. While team officials had long claimed the new field would have the same dimensions of the old, an overlay of the two fields proved otherwise. With flat fences dominating the left- and right-field power alleys in the stadium, I predicted a hitters’ park. Little did I realize what George had wrought.

The story of the offense is well worn by now. Home runs at the new park are on pace to challenge home run records. Fly balls into right field are sailing over the wall. It’s the wind currents. Yadda yadda yadda.

While we can’t really dispute the home run explosion anymore, the meteorologist at AccuWeather.com are sticking up for the wind. The weather is not to blame, says Tim Buckley. Rather, the fences are.

Buckley’s piece leads with the graphic below, and it’s hard to dispute his findings. In fact, I had been researching a similar piece to find out if the fences were impacting the game, and Buckley and his researchers basically did it for me. They examined “detailed schematics” of the two stadiums and concluded that the new park’s differences have “significant implications.” He writes:

In right field, the newfound homer haven, the wall structure is slightly different than the old park. The main difference involves curvature. The gentle curve from right field to center field seen in the original Yankee Stadium has largely been eliminated at the new stadium. This is due in large part to the presence of a manual scoreboard embedded within the wall. Losing this curvature has resulted in a right field that is shorter by 4 to 5 feet on average, but up to 9 feet in spots.

Not only is the famed short porch even shorter in the new stadium, but the walls themselves are not as tall. In the old ballpark, the walls in right field stood at a height of approximately 10 feet. At this height, it was difficult for outfielders to scale the wall and attempt to rob a home run over the fence. Fast forward to 2009, and the outfielders have been scaling the wall without any trouble. The result? The new outfield fences only rise to a height of 8 feet, adding to the ease hitting a home run to right.

Taking into account the dimensions of the field and wall height, AccuWeather.com has calculated that 19 percent (20 out of 105) home runs would not have flown out of the old stadium. If the first 29 games are any indication, 293 home runs will be hit by the end of the year at the new Yankee Stadium, just short of the record of 303 home runs hit at Denver’s Coors Field in 1999. If this is the case, as many as 56 home runs could be attributed to the size of the new playing field

As to the weather, Buckley sums it up: “There has been no consistent pattern observed in the wind speed and direction that would lead to an increase in home runs so far this year.”

Over the next few days, we’ll have more on the design choices that went into the new stadium and Major League Baseball’s reaction to it. For now, we seem to know the culprit, and it is as we predicted it would be in April. The fences carry some of the blame.

In the end, though, the question remains: Does it matter? Both the Yankees and their opponents are hitting in the same park, and if the Yanks’ pitchers are better, the Yanks’ bats stand to benefit. The fans love the homer barrage, and it makes the games never out of reach. I think we’ll all have to learn to live with a homer-happy stadium, and we’ll have to like it. After all, chicks and Mark Teixeira dig the long ball.

Click for full-size

Via UmpBump, we learn that MLB.com is now featuring the Yankee Stadium Home Run Watch. They post videos of the home runs every day, which you can already find under the team’s highlights. But hey, it’s all in one place, which is neat. And it comes with the current pace — which was brought down with yesterday’s one-homer affair. Will they break the Coors Field record of 303 homers in a season? Meh.