If Yankee fans who waited five-and-a-half hours for Thursday’s game were happy to be invited to move down to the first two levels, and thought getting an additional freebie to a “non-premium” game in 2009 and 2010 was a case of management stepping up for them, then they are either happy to be abused or beaten down by decades of being taken for granted. .
The employees — meaning the Yankee and Nationals players — should have been the ones inconvenienced by flying home between Florida and Atlanta to make up the game on Monday, the only mutual off day the Nationals and Yankees had for the rest of the season. Not the paying customers, who whould always come first but haven’t in a long time.
In light of the dire forecast for daylight hours Thursday, the probability that the weather would clear in the evening, and the bad options for rescheduling the game, here is what the Yankees should have done: Announce Wednesday that the Thursday game was being rescheduled for 7 p.m. and that anyone holding tickets unable to attend at night could get a rain check for another game.
Of course, the Yankees preferred not to do that because they had to fly to South Florida after the game and hoped the skies would clear by late afternoon, enabling an earlier departure. To have the fans show up by 1 pm. when there was no chance the game could start at that point was completely inconsiderate.
Not that the Yankees behaved any differently than the majority of well-supported franchises would have. Really, the United States Golf Association, which at first arrogantly refused to offer rain checks after the abreviated first round of the U.S. Open until the office of the state attorney general got involved, turned Randy Levine, Lonn Troost and the Steinbrenners into Ralph Nader by comparison.