Baseball’s Flee Market

Not long after the final outs are recorded at New York's two baseball stadiums this fall, the Yankees and Mets plan to begin the biggest garage sales in the history of sports. With both teams set to open new ballparks next year, the clubs plan to sell to fans and collectors every piece of their old stadiums that holds memories: seats, signs and banners, fencing, telephones, outfield walls and padding, concessions stands, scoreboards, lockers, benches, and pitching rubbers. The clubs could each reap $10 million or more in sales.

Already auctioneers and fans are trying to get a piece of the action. Two fans face larceny charges for attempting to steal bunting from Yankee Stadium's upper deck on Opening Day. Lonn Trost, the Yankees' chief operating officer, said the team is seeking prosecution as a warning to other fans. The Yankees are trying to avoid the kind of pilfering that marred the last game at Metropolitan Stadium in 1981, when Minnesota Vikings fans used wrenches and other tools to take out seats, benches, signs, scoreboard lights, and even the goalposts.

The mining of old stadiums as revenue sources is a fairly new phenomenon, dating back just a few decades. In 1973, when Yankee Stadium underwent a massive renovation, the team virtually gave away the park. In a promotion with Marlboro cigarettes and the Korvettes department store chain, fans could get a seat for $7.50 and proof-of-purchase seals from Marlboro. But as baseball grew as a global business dedicated to monetizing every item and every moment, ball clubs began looking for new opportunities for profit. Both New York teams are reported to be in negotiations with City Hall to buy the city-owned stadiums, which are to be torn down next year. Though previous sales of memorabilia from stadiums across the country have netted as much as $1 million, experts say the history of the Yankees and the size of the New York market guarantees that the New York stadium sell-offs will bring in many times that amount.

The question is how much—and how best to maximize the profit? Steiner Sports, the company that is managing memorabilia sales for the teams, is looking to develop a multiyear plan to avoid a glut on the market. The first step: know the customer. "Two kinds of guys buy things from stadiums," says Kevin Reichard, publisher of Ballpark Digest. "There are people who want to make a lot of money. And there are 45-year-old dudes who are trying to recapture their youth."

George Tahan is in the collector mold. A high school athletic director who has been collecting memorabilia since 1990, when he bought seats from old Comiskey Park in Chicago, Tahan has a basement filled with seats from the homes of all but two of Major League Baseball's original 16 teams, as well as turnstiles from Comiskey and Shibe Park in Philadelphia, signs from Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, retired number banners from Fenway Park in Boston, and a ticket box from Cleveland's Municipal Stadium. Men's room signs from three stadiums hang over a urinal in his bathroom.

Tahan, who sells memorabilia from his Arlington, Mass., home, says he is watching the New York stadium sales with caution. "I am going to try and get some seats," he says. "A lot will depend on pricing. In some instances I have waited and then bought some of the seats in the secondary market, after the initial sale. I did that for Mile High Stadium [in Denver and got] plenty of seats at pretty reasonable prices."