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April 18, 2009: Shakespeare & Baseball
A friend forwarded me the link to this YouTube video from 1958. Comedians Wayne & Shuster combine references to the great baseball figures of the time (Leo Durocher, Pee Wee Reese, Yogi Berra, etc…) with all the recognizable Shakespeare references they could possibly pack in to one ten minute skit. I’m sharing it with you…
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April 17, 2009: First and second, two out
After the debacle of the inaugural game at new Yankee Stadium, today’s game seemed much more fitting as an opener! After all, Derek Jeter hit the key home run and Mariano Rivera got the save, among other things. It was a gorgeous day in New York, the temperature just kissing 70. I didn’t actually go…
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Coming soon…
My photos and write-up of opening day at the new Yankee Stadium. Heading back to Massachusetts, will get the pics uploaded when I get there!
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April 15, 2009: Moving the Fences In
So today was the day that MLB honored Jackie Robinson, an annual event on April 15th that has been growing bigger every year since the retirement of Robinson’s #42 throughout all of baseball (except for those players who were still wearing it, like Mariano Rivera). Today every player in the majors (and even the umpires)…
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April 13, 2009: Bash Brother, Interview with Dale Tafoya
Dale Tafoya is the author of “Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed” — which I reviewed here on “Why I Like Baseball” back on December 14th, 2008. The book reminds readers of a lot of very significant facts about the early days of the Steroid Era which are being quickly forgotten in the onrush of debate…
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Breaking news… sort of…
We interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast of Welcome Back Baseball with this announcement. My fiction writing and my baseball writing don’t often coincide, but they did recently when I wrote an erotic baseball novel for a company called Ravenous Romance. They are an ebook publisher, and … voila! It’s not yet live on Fictionwise or…
Why I Like Baseball
AN ONLINE JOURNAL OF BASEBALL ENTHUSIASM, by CECILIA TAN
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.
Cecilia Tan
Writer