Say No to YES Network

I've got baseball on the brain. It should come as no surprise to my faithful readers that I am once again stricken with the paralyzing need to write about ball. The season's in swing again. The trades have been made and most of the good tickets have already been sold. It is, after all, April, and for this baseball fan, April has never been the cruelest month.

I'm the only girl in a private fantasy baseball league, and when I'm not busy tracking the stats of my team, the Water Buffalo, I'm busy following the other men in my life, the New York Yankees. I can't wait to sit down and turn on the game to drool over those dapper pin-striped boys.

But alas, this year there will be no televised glory, at least not in the tri-state area. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner has decided to create a television network called YES (a not-so-clever acronym for the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network), a network that will air most of the New York Yankees' ballgames this season. That's right, folks. Good old baseball will no longer be available on good old local television.

This isn't the first time baseball has let me down. In 1994, just as the Yankees were wrapping up an excellent season, baseball players went on strike, causing the commissioner to cancel the World Series. Eight years ago, during that baseball-less summer, I thought that things couldn't get much worse. But now, with the YES network buying up Yankee TV, and Cablevision refusing to carry the station as a part of basic cable, it seems that one overpaid owner is asking us to express our affection for the Bronx Bombers by switching cable providers. Here I envision an oak-paneled office and Seinfeld's wimpy George Costanza pleading, "But Mr. Steinbrenner, the fans love the team. Don't take this away from them," to which Steinbrenner replies, "Yes, George, I know they love the team, but what I want to know is how MUCH!"

So what's a dedicated fan to do?

These days, seats are pricey, beer is pricey, baseball players are greedy, and club owners are even greedier. What was formerly a sport of strategy has been reduced to a sport of financial squabbling. The games are on prime-time television to attract better sponsors at the cost of a million young baseball fans who can't stay up late enough to watch. Now the games will be on cable to attract MORE sponsors at the cost of a million old baseball fans who can't (or won't) pay for the premiums.

"What we all should do," George Vecsey wrote in the March 29 edition of The New York Times, "is set one radio dial to 880 AM and let [John] Sterling and [Charley] Steiner paint the pictures for us, rather than pay one more dime to the manipulative bandits from various cable companies."

"Wherever you live," Vecsey continued, "the radio transports you to a parallel world of the old American game in all its archaic daily leisure"--at least until Bud Selig and Donald Fehr mess up the labor negotiations before next season.

Vecsey is right, because baseball is public property, property to which every baseball fan, young and old, should have access. What we've lost--and what we must retrieve--is what made baseball so magical in the first place. I wasn't alive when Yankee pals Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle competed for the home run record in 1961, back when baseball was beautiful and pure. I wasn't alive, but I feel nostalgic for that era, because it seems that back then was when baseball was really baseball, more than a sport that could be explained through summaries and statistics. Back then, you had to see it to believe it.

Well, maybe that magic doesn't exist anymore, but that doesn't mean that baseball has lost all importance. Ultimately, Cablevision and YES are only contributing to the ruin of a game that has been headed downhill for years. But I like to believe that somewhere, underneath all of the red tape and money-grubbing, lies the simple grandeur of baseball. Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but I'm not willing to give up without a fight. So, in celebration of the old American game and "all its archaic daily leisure," this fan is turning off the tube and tuning in to the radio.

Hannah Selinger is a Columbia College senior majoring in English and comparative literature.