Yankee Stadium Home Plate Screen Has YES Viewers, Critics Crying Foul

By Ken Kerschbaumer

TV critics in New York and New York Yankee fans are already grumbling about the new stadium as the protective screen behind home plate extends higher than the netting in the old park so that cameras in the high-home camera position are now shooting through the screen.

The New York Times’ Richard Sandomir wrote about the screen netting on his blog. “What used to be an unimpeded shot at the old stadium — where a smaller net was tucked beneath the camera position — is now like looking through a schoolyard fence,” he said of watching the preseason games against the Chicago Cubs this weekend on the YES Network.

Randy Levin, Yankees president, told Sandomir, “We had the choice: fan safety or a tiny difference in that high home shot for YES. We did this after consulting with a lot of experts.”

With the stands closer than ever to home plate, Levin has a solid point, but New York Daily News columnist Bill Raissman agues that the screen issue needs to be addressed. “There must be a way to shoot around the net,” he said in his column. “There’s got to be a way to produce a net-less telecast from a different camera position.”

The team and YES have until opening day on April 16 to try to ameliorate the problem. But Sandomir said the layout of the stadium, well known since 2006, seems to argue against the likelihood of any possible alteration.

Eric Handler, a YES spokesman, told Sandomir that the network was looking at everything and trying to be as creative as possible. The home-plate camera position was shifted from one that was originally higher and showed cables and wires.