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Injury visit
Hideki Matsui just hit a comebacker that knocked pitcher Alberto Arias from the game. The Yankees couldn’t do anything with him as it was, as he struck out the side in the third. Burnett has continued to impress. Four inings so far and not a single baserunner. The ‘stros are looking weak and foolish against…
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Blogging live from “the Boss”
So, today is my first spring training game. Renaming Legends field to Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees also made some renovations. There are new ribbon boards for video. And there is Wifi! So I am sitting behind home plate and typing this on my iPhone. Burnett looked really good in the first, punctuating his inning with…
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Winter Is Officially Over
Winter is officially over, because I’m on the plane to Tampa as I type this. My words look calm, but the excitement is bubbling as I look around me and all of a sudden everything seems to be about baseball. We arrived at Logan Airport with enough time to grab a meal before boarding, and…
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The Strawberry Rocker Soap Opera
(Originally posted on February 25, 2000 and a fascinating look at the news of the day… Reposted on new URL on December 21, 2008.) The news is fairly well-plastered these days with two types of negative articles about baseball. Those about Darryl Strawberry’s relapse into cocaine use, and those on John Rocker’s December Sports Illustrated…
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Waiting For Spring Training…
(Originally posted on February 20, 2000. Reposted to new site on December 19, 2008.) I’ve said before how I “can’t wait” for the season to start. (Or even for Spring training to start!) Going to see games at Spring Training is something that, when I was a kid, I never thought I would get to…
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I Need A Scorecard
(Originally published on February 19, 2000. Reposted to new site on December 18, 2008.) I always liked going to Yankee games as a kid, even if I didn’t really understand what was going on all the time. Being with my Dad, the excitement of the crowd, having a picnic lunch in the stands or getting…
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