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CNN Sunday Morning

Yankees Fans Crying Foul Over Plan That's Keeping Them From Seeing Their Team in Action

Aired April 21, 2002 - 09:25   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Well to some people baseball is just a game, but for others, it's an obsession, a religion, maybe even a matter of life and death. Some New York Yankee fans are crying foul over a plan that's keeping them from seeing their team in action this season. Keith Olbermann explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEITH OLBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This was merely a provincial dispute about whether or not some people could see this. The New York Yankees started their own cable television network this year. It will broadcast all but about two dozen of the team's games. The problem is half of Metropolitan New York does not get this new network.

The dispute about that is in part about money, and in part about revenge. The cable network the Yankees used to be on is owned by the company that owns about half the household cable systems in the area. In the immediate vicinity of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, you can not watch the Yankees while they play in the Bronx. The big issue here, not a big issue anywhere else until now.

The Yankees' office has fielded literally hundreds of phone calls from disgruntled, angry, and even threatening fans who are not getting to see the new network. But one threat hit home.

(on camera): The caller said she was housebound, elderly, poor, and could not leave her apartment to come see the Yankees in person. All that she had to live for was the watch the Yankees games on cable.

She telephone the Yanks twice, and the second time, says the Yankees' employee who took both of the calls, the woman said, this is my name. Look for it in the newspapers tomorrow, because I'm going to kill myself. The Yankees looked, nothing, not yet.

(voice over): Writing about the epic 1975 baseball World Series, the great writer Roger Angel observed that there was nothing more illogical than an emotional investment in something as crassly commercial as a professional sports franchise. But, he concluded, sports isn't about caring for something commercial. It's about caring for something.

The suicidal caller could have been making it up. People do that. They threaten when they have no desire to end their own lives. But to even make that phone call and make that statement reminds us not to forget that this matters to people.

Keith Olbermann, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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