My 80-Year-Old Yankees Fan Mom Feels Shut Out of the Game

Tuning in to a baseball game has become a frustrating maze of expensive, complicated streaming platforms

Frankie Leonetti,

AARP

Published March 23, 2026

a graphic illustration combines photos of three framed photos of the writer’s family on a blue wall with an image of a hand trying to change channels on a flat screen TV

AARP (Frames, TV, Baseball, Hand, Static: Getty Images; Stadium: Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images; Snapshots: Leonetti)

Mom is a die-hard Yankees fan; she grew up in Harlem and the Bronx, where her love for the team took root at a young age.

Known to her grandchildren as Nonna, and to many as Annamaria, she celebrated her 80th birthday last year stuck in Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Her birthday happened to fall on the same day as the MLB’s opening game of the season. Even though she wasn’t at home to watch on her 65-inch TV, she was able to catch the game on the Fox Sports 1 channel on a television in her hospital room. That game was easy to find. But most days, it’s not.

At home I’d often hear her say, “Where the heck are my Yanks?” She’d flip from one TV channel to the next, scrambling to figure out who was hosting the Yankees. Sometimes she’d become so frustrated, she’d give up.

Can you believe that? Getting so fed up that she’d rather not watch her favorite team at all.

a photo shows the author's mother, Annamaria, wearing a Yankees shirt, holding a favorite iconic photo of manager Casey Stengel and Mickey Mantle

The author's mother, Annamaria, wears her New York Yankees shirt and holds a favorite iconic photo of Yankees manager Casey Stengel and Baseball Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle.

Courtesy Leonetti

My mom is old-school. She misses the days when you could check the TV Guide and flip through channels without a hassle. She’s not so keen on new technology. She barely knows how to use her cellphone.

In 2019 I signed her up for Hulu Live, and it was a game changer because the YES Network was included in the plan. She was finally able to watch the Yankees again. Her smile said everything. Then she realized not every game was broadcast.

Hulu dropped the YES Network entirely at the start of the 2020 season. Since then, the franchise has made it unnecessarily difficult to watch the games. When she couldn’t find the Yankees, she’d turn to the Hallmark Channel instead.

There was a time when all my mom needed was a radio on the kitchen table, carrying her through nine innings. Back then, following baseball wasn’t complicated.

It was joy. It was family. It was home.

“We listened to every game,” my mother told me. “I remember being only 8. My sister Paulina was 12, and we had the radio on all the time. Television, back then, was a luxury we didn’t have. Even if you did, not every game was on TV.”

The young girl she once was twinkled in her eyes as she reminisced.

“Mamma would yell at us because there was school the next day,” she said with a laugh. “But we couldn’t sleep until we heard who won. But when it was a night game or a doubleheader or if it went to extra innings, Mamma would turn the radio off. So we had to find out who won at school or in the newspaper the next day.”

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Author Frankie Leonetti and his family are shown posing for a photo in the stands at Yankee Stadium in 2018

Annamaria (far left) and author Frankie Leonetti (fifth from left) attend a game with other family members at Yankee Stadium in September 2018.

Courtesy Leonetti

Her love for the game began with her first trip to Yankee Stadium, in 1953. “Tickets were just $1.50 for kids back then,” she said. “We had grandstand seats.” They snacked on Cracker Jacks and ice cream.

“Summertime was when we went to the most games. We’d spend seven to eight hours at the ballpark. Mamma would send us with omelettes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We sat in the bleachers, all the way out in the outfield.”

She exhaled. “And then there was Mickey. I used to yell, ‘Hi, Mickey!’ and he’d call back to us, ‘Good to see you kids! Thanks for coming.’ ”

These are the memories that built a lifetime of loyalty. She has followed the Yankees through decades of triumph and heartbreak. From Mickey Mantle to the present, through championships and droughts, she stayed true, season after season.

But the game is slipping ever further away from her. It’s not that her love for the Yankees has faded. Ticket prices have soared far beyond what she can afford. The joy of turning on the radio or TV has turned into an obstacle course of streaming services and blackout restrictions. YES Network, Amazon Prime, Peacock, Apple TV+, national broadcasts — she can’t keep track, and each subscription carries a price tag.

a photo shows the author's mother, Annamaria, pointing at Mickey Mantle’s tribute plaque to at the National Baseball Hall of Fame

Annamaria found a tribute plaque to the Yankees‘ Mickey Mantle at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York.

Courtesy Leonetti

Across the country, thousands of lifelong fans, many of them seniors, may feel the same way. The very people who built the game’s foundation, who passed it down through generations, are being priced out of the sport.

For my mother, it isn’t about luxury boxes or fancy stadium seats. She isn’t asking for souvenirs or special treatment. She wants to see Aaron Judge hit towering home runs, hear the crowd roar again, feel that familiar spark of excitement.

“We were happy just to be there,” she said. “It didn’t matter where we sat. It was the Yankees. That’s all that mattered.”

Baseball, perhaps more than any other sport, relies on tradition. But what happens when the game forgets the very people who kept it alive?

The Yankees, and Major League Baseball as a whole, should remember fans like my mother. She doesn’t ask for much. She wants only to be part of the game she has loved for nearly 75 years. Because the Yankees don’t just belong to the digital future. They belong to the people who carried them here.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.

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Frankie Leonetti is a graphic designer and writer in New York’s Hudson Valley. He is finishing a novel inspired by the life of his grandmother. Find him on LinkedIn.