They’re having a fire sale in the Bronx. Everything half off. And guess what?

You can’t afford it.

As predicted in this very space nine days ago, the Yankees reduced ticket prices on Tuesday.

They didn’t just reduce them, they cut them to the bone, slashed and burned, took it to an absolute rock-bottom, no-profit-margin, I’ll-have-to-go-talk-to-my-manager price point, and you know what?

You still can’t afford it.

They finally figured out a way to fill their new ballpark, by giving tickets away, provided, of course, that buy one first. At half-price.

And you still can’t afford it.

And neither can I, nor, I suspect, can most of the people the Yankees are trying like hell to lure into their $1.5 billion white elephant of a ballpark that right now is performing about as well as the team that calls it home.

This is nobody’s fault but theirs, and if George Steinbrenner were still in charge around here, whoever decided that $2,500 seats were a good idea would be looking for a new job, and probably his teeth, right about now.

The Yankees are the only organization in the history of professional sports that could cut ticket prices in half, as they did Tuesday, and you still need to take out a mortgage to afford them.

That 50 percent reduction took them from the outrageous to the merely exorbitant, and while it’s a nice gesture to acknowledge you have made a mistake, it doesn’t even begin to correct it.

Besides, they’re not doing it because they’re nice guys, or as a goodwill gesture to their fans, most of whom they’ve already priced out of the neighborhood, or because someone took a second look at the rate card and decided, “Geez, these tickets are kind of expensive.”

They’re doing it because they have to in order to fill the ballpark, cover their payroll, make their monthly nut. And if the economy rebounds next year, you can bet that the ticket prices will, too, regardless of how well, or poorly, the 2009 Yankees finish up.

But for the remainder of 2009, some season-ticket holders will get refunds, others will get a credit toward future purchases, and others will get “complimentary seats” which are not at all comparable, since they are in remote locations, higher up and farther away. Perfect for your ex-wife or your father-in-law.

But it doesn’t really matter what they do or how low they ultimately go, because they’ve already set the bar way too high.

The Yankees could cut ticket prices by 90 percent, settle for 10 cents on the dollar from their face value, and they’d still be way too expensive.

This is a PR disaster the likes of which this team never has seen, at least not involving A-Rod, and it has to be killing them. They claim it only involves a handful of seats — 600 out of 50,000, according to a Yankee source — and yet, they sent out a two-page press release that requires a degree in contract law to fully understand. They continue to maintain the fiction that the ballpark is nearly sold out — act now, 3.5 million seats already gone! — and yet, they are giving away empty seats like they were refrigerator magnets.

So now, they have what for them amounts to a fire sale. And still, it is like a sale at Tiffany’s or your friendly neighborhood Bentley dealer.

It looks nice. It sounds great.

And you still can’t afford it.