Ladies and gentlemen, I give you insight from the newest member of the Struck Out Looking guest blogging team — Chris Mirabella. (Not to be confused with Chris Yamaoka, despite the fact that they’re both Chris, both work at fancy law firms, and both have foreign last names.)  Enjoy his piece, the first of many, we hope.

Round, psychologically satisfying statistics like 500 homeruns, 3,000 strikeouts, and 300 wins are the fixtures that keep plaques bolted to the walls in Cooperstown. Numbers help laymen and experts alike define the modern game and cement the legacies of players from the past. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the flurry. But on Saturday afternoon, as I watched CC Sabathia twirl a gem against the Red Sox while mired in a golf and burrito induced semi-coma, one number snapped me back to consciousness. It was subtle. It escaped the undocumented tenth circle of hell that is the inside of Joe Buck’s mouth, floated out into the ether, and wasn’t touched upon by even the most acute of Fox’s crack broadcast team (et tu, Ken Rosenthal?).

That number was 3 and it is the amount of sellouts the new Yankee Stadium has had this year — two of which were games in this series. Coming into this weekend, the neon, billion-dollar baby of George Steinbrenner had only sold out once, and that was for the first game in its history. What initially seemed to be a carnitas-induced hallucination suddenly began to ring true. Despite a first place team and a brand new park, it took a weekend influx of “Youk” chanting Red Sox fans to push stadium attendance to a respectable level and fill those empty legend box seats the Yankee front office ill-advisedly decided to place in the camera’s view right behind home plate.

Average stadium attendance is hovering around 45,000 — the lowest total since 2003 and down 8,000 tickets from last year in what is, admittedly, a stadium with a lesser capacity. But according to ESPN’s attendance tracker, even after these games, the Yankees will be on pace to sell their worst per-game average since 2004 at 87%. This year that ranks them behind, among others, the Sawks, the Brewers and the Mets (yes, those 51-59 Mets). There is a lot of disgraceful behavior to chide the nearest Red Sox fan for (Fever Pitch, pink “B” hats, etc.). But the fact they’ve sold out all of their home games for years — and continue to do so — while we’ve sold out three and attendance plummets is truly sad, and not the fault of anyone but the front office. Yet they still pretend to care. “How may I help you?” the Yankees ask me as I stroll about their stadium. “Try making games more affordable!” I shout in reply… this interaction of course being predicated on the fallacy that I could afford to go to games in the first place. Embarrassingly high ticket prices have become as unique to the Yankee fan’s condition as Johnny Damon home runs that just barely scrape over the right-center field wall.

But who can stay mad at the ones you love? Even as I write this Damon has launched one such home run to tie the fourth game of the series with two outs in the 8th. Teixeira just sent a “Tex message” (note to Sterling — retire this catchphrase immediately, its awful) into the right field stands to put them ahead. Tack on a few insurance runs from Nick Swisher and suddenly the AL east lead has gone from 2 ½ game to 6 1/2. Sometimes the numbers are all that matter.