Why I Like Baseball

AN ONLINE JOURNAL OF BASEBALL ENTHUSIASM, by CECILIA TAN

  • Today’s Game/Baseball in Tweets

    UMPS CARE charity has seats for games at Yankee Stadium! Buy now: http://www.umpscare.com/Buy-Now_80e7362342e8.html # Powered by Twitter Tools

  • Women’s Baseball Player Diary Part 6

    Originally appeared on October 14, 2003. Okay folks, get ready for a really personal one this time. This entry isn’t about how the Yankees have executed three strike-em-out-throw-em-out double plays, or how they had four men reach base by base on balls and scored none, whereas they gave up only one walk and that was…

  • Women’s Baseball Player Diary Part 5

    Originally posted on August 16, 2003. July 26 2003 I had to miss Wednesday’s game because of the writing class I’m teaching, but I heard we won. That made the team’s record 6-2 (with two rainouts and one game cancelled for lack of umpires) before today’s game. The only two losses were both to the…

  • Women’s Baseball Player Diary, Part 4

    Originally posted on July 24, 2003. July 1 2003 Narragansett Electric (that’s my team) beat ISL tonight. The final score was 9-4, I think, though it could have been 9-6. I know we were leading 6-4 in the fourth, having scored all six runs in the first inning when the ISL pitcher/coach, Darry, just didn’t…

  • 2003 Women’s Baseball Diary Part 3

    Baseball Player Diary 2003, Part 3 Originally posted on June 30, 2003. June 5 Tonight I volunteered at the ABCD Field of Dreams tournament at Fenway Park. ABCD is Action for Boston Community Development, and the Field of Dreams is a tournament where large corporations who donate a heap o’ money get to play in…

  • 2003 Women’s Baseball Diary, Part 2

    Originally posted on June 7 2003: Baseball Diary 2003, Part 2. May 15 My arm hurt all weekend. Then again, so did my back, my knee, my neck… it has gotten cold and damp again, if you can believe that, and every part of me that has any nagging injury is aching. And the Yankees…

Welcome to “Why I Like Baseball”

“Why I Like Baseball” is the one of the oldest baseball blogs on the Internet, dating back to before the word “blog” existed. (I think it’s slightly older than Jay Jaffe’s “Futility Infielder,” and was slightly preceded by Geoff Young’s “Ducksnorts.”) I first hand-coded the site in HTML 1.0 at some point in 1998-99. (Most of the pre-2000 content has been lost to bit rot.) I had been away from baseball for much of my adult life, but the McGwire-Sosa home run race caught my attention I was underemployed at the time, had just published my first book of short stories with a major publisher, and was taking freelance writing gigs as I could find them, but what I really wanted to write about was baseball. So I took it upon myself to create a website. Back then, the Internet was smaller and less populated, and I soon discovered my little passion project was being read by folks like the editors of ESPN: The Magazine, who published a surprise shout-out to me. My writings eventually led to me writing a book on the Yankees, editing the Yankees Annual, writing for Gotham Baseball, and at one point even creating online content directly for the Yankees themselves.

Author Cecilia Tan with Babe Ruth

Cecilia Tan

Writer