Woo the Yanks will get a new stadium. At a jammed news conference in the Yankee Stadium club, owner George Steinbrenner said the Yankees’ $800 million retro-style ballpark scheduled to open in 2009 will become the same kind of baseball mecca his current home is — just a block away. Now while some pundits will say that it’s the end of an era - and in many ways it is - it is only fitting that Steinbrenner get to build the stadium for the next era of Yankee baseball.

I won’t pontificate on the beauty or luxury of the new stadium, you can read press releases and other articles for that.

The point that baseball fans should be noting when reading about the new Yankee Stadium, is the fact that while the Yanks are expected to pay $60 million in revenue sharing this season, they will soon be able to begin deducting the cost of construction of the new stadium from the team’s payments.

A few Yankee revenue sharing fact’s to put this in perspective for you…

In 2003, the first year of the new luxury tax, the Yankees were the only team to pay, owing $11,798,357, according to the team’s latest revised bill. As they exceeded the threshold a second time in 2004, the Yankees were taxed at a rate of 30 percent for the amount they were over. Boston and Anaheim were taxed at a 22.5 percent rate last season as it was their first year of being over the threshold.

As the Yankees will be over the 2005 threshold of $128 million - with their payroll of $208,306,817 an average of $5,833,334 per player - they will be taxed at a 40 percent rate.

With their $60 million contribution under baseball’s revenue-sharing plan this season,the Yankees will send the commissioner’s office about $85 million of their estimated $315 million revenue in 2005. As soon as they start spending money for construction of the new stadium, that revenue sharing figure will get smaller and smaller.

Bottom line…If your the Blue Jay’s (or any other small market team), you’d better take that fact under consideration when making your budget the next few seasons.