Baseball's back.
That's the good news.
But after the eight-month players strike, "This Space For Rent" signs now hang in the windows of the Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers across from Yankee Stadium.
That's the bad news.
The strike hit several businesses near the stadium right where it counts -- at the bank. And while many local proprietors are looking forward to game days and nights when thousands of fans will wander through their stores in search of the perfect souvenir or a cold draft, they know how tenuous their fortunes can be.
The players' union still does not have a contract with the owners and the possibility of another strike looms over the 1995 season.
"I just hope they don't go down again," said Joe Bastone, owner of the Yankee Tavern on 161st Street, a block from the stadium.
Clad in a stained polo shirt bearing a red, white and blue Yankee emblem over his heart, Bastone wandered back and forth behind his bar last Wednesday, making sure his crowd had all the coffee and spirits it needed. Customers huddled over their drinks on this cold, wet morning and chattered about the men whose autographed pictures line the walls.
"`Bout time they're coming back," a customer told Bastone. "You believe $5 million ain't enough for `em?"
The Yankee Tavern has been in business since the Depression, but Bastone said the last six months have been some of the toughest he's seen. Bastone estimated the baseball crowds account for 30 percent of his business. Since the midsummer strike cost the Yankee Tavern a shot at pennant race and postseason customers, Bastone was forced to fire two workers.
Now he has to worry about the fans abandoning a sport that abandoned them.
"Some fans are going to boycott," Bastone said. "But we should bave a good team, so hopefully the new people who come see a good team'll make up for the ones who boycott."
The season is arriving just in time for Mohamed Abbadi, who has owned Te-amo Imported Cigars, as well as a Yankee souvenir shop across River Avenue from the stadium, for 18 years. Last summer, Abbadi said, he stocked up on extra cigars, hats and shirts believing the Yankees would still be playing in the fall.
Abbadi said the strike, which cost him between $1,500 and $2,000, was so discouraging that he closed the stores and returned to his native Yemen from October to December.
But George Silver, who owns Stadium Liquors on 161st Street, a half-block from the stadium, prefers picket lines to line drives. The Yanks cost him as much as $200 a game, he said, because the large crowds keep his usual customers away, and the fans don't buy liquor from him because they can't bring bottles into the stadium.
"Steinbrenner can take them to New Jersey or Yonkers, for all I care," Silver said, referring to the Yankee owner's threats to move his team out of the borough.
As for finding a new restaurant to replace Wendy's, the landlord, Friedland Properties, is still looking for a new tenant.
But George Suarez, who manages the McDonald's across the street from its former competition, said he has hired more than enough people to handle the extra customers he expects when the season begins next week.
"Did the strike hurt us? Yes," said Suarez. "Are we happy baseball's back? Of course. Are we going to do better because Wendy's isn't there? You bet."