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.
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.