Pettitte, Jeter, Rivera 'remember weeknights with fewer than 20,000 in the stands'--Hartford Courant

"This might be everyone's last chance to breathe the air in a Yankee world that

• was mostly about the baseball.

• Under the normal, baseball-specific philosophy, this would be a good time for the Yankees to start over, let the old players go and eschew big spending on free agents until enough young players are developed.

• The last time the Yankees were this bad, in the early 1990s,

• they were able to do that, getting by on 1.7 or 1.8 million in attendance at prices ($10.54 for the average ticket)

that sound today like something out of the Great Depression.

• Pettitte, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera go back far enough to remember weeknights with

• fewer than 20,000 in the stands."...

If you call the current Yankee Stadium 'The House that Ruth Built,' there can be no question that the down payment on the new stadium was paid for by the 13 year excellence of these 3 players: Pettitte, Jeter, and Rivera. (sm)

• From Newsday: "The stands used to be half-empty when he (Derek Jeter) broke in 13 years ago

• and now they are packed every day."...

There is no evidence of a 'show' filling the stands. What filled the stands was the team going to the post season for 13 consecutive years. There is only one player on the team today who was in all 13 of those post seasons, equivalent to another year and a half of regular season performance, Mariano Rivera.

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