Why I Like Baseball

AN ONLINE JOURNAL OF BASEBALL ENTHUSIASM, by CECILIA TAN

  • 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…

  • May 7 2003 : Out Standing In The Field

    Cecilia’s Baseball Diary 2003 May 7 2003 : Out Standing In The Field Here I am again, trying to play baseball. For those who are new to my endeavors, here’s a quick recap. March 23, 2000 — While surfing the Internet, I discover the existence of “organized” women’s baseball in the US. While there’s no…

  • 2003 Women’s Baseball Diary Repost

    Starting later today I will begin at WHY I LIKE BASEBALL to re-post my diary entries from the 2003 season, when I was cut from playing part-time in the New England Women’s Baseball League and took up full-time with the Pawtucket Slaterettes, then capped off the season with the 24 Hours for Africa women’s baseball…

  • Today’s Game/Baseball in Tweets

    @Ledger_Yankees Replacing #nyy Why? # I worked a little late today so by the time I got home it was 10 minutes into the game and the #nyy were already up 2-0! Nice news. # Wow. Jorge drilled in the soft tissue of the knee by a pitch. He barely made it around the bases,…

  • Today’s Game/Baseball in Tweets

    A-Rod infield hit and a triple tonight. But the eyes are all on Hughes. #nyy # Aww, dammit. Hughes gets hit with a comebacker that ends up an infield hit. His parents are in the stands, though, must be proud. # So I guess this kind of quiets the arguments about how Hughes should've stayed…

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