'It's open season on A-Rod and his accuser' (Irish Times)

[Jackeens]

AMERICA AT LARGE: SELENA ROBERTS’ book came out on Monday. A day later, down in Tampa, where he has spent the past two months rehabilitating a surgically-repaired hip, Alex Rodriguez hit two home runs in an “extended spring training” game. Speculation has it that the major leagues’ highest-paid player could rejoin the New York Yankees as early as tomorrow night in Baltimore, writes GEORGE KIMBALL

It’s a move that, from the Yankees’ standpoint, can’t come soon enough. A team whose $200 million payroll ranks as the highest in baseball has struggled this far to an undistinguished 13-13 record. Worse, having unveiled their sparkling new $1.3 billion home in the Bronx just a month ago, the Yanks are 6-5 at home, and the television people haven’t yet figured out a way to show pictures of pitcher and batter that don’t also reveal an embarrassingly high number of empty seats behind home plate.

You could chalk it up to misfortune that the completion of the New Yankee Stadium happened to coincide with the collapse of the global economy. Raising the ticket prices to $2,500 for those seats probably wasn’t a great idea in the first place, and before April was out the team had already slashed the prices on many of its more expensive tickets.


Rest of article: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2009/0507/1224246053404.html