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March 25, 2006: Simple Pleasure
“Baseball travelogue: Saint Pete. Today’s travels took us to Al Lang Field, spring home of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. This venerable old park was built in 1916, and the grandstand has been variously rebuilt at different times through the years. The Braves, Yankees, and Cardinals all used the park during their tenures in St.…
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March 23, 2006: Big Man (Giambi & PEDs)
“A new book came out today that details steroid abuse in baseball and which singles out three players in particular, Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and Jason Giambi. Can you guess which of the three has admitted what he did…?”
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December 20 2005: Yellow Doze of Texas
They say everything is bigger in Texas. Texas definitely has a thing about bigness, and when you go there, that size-ism is on display everywhere. The last time I visited Texas I discovered just how different the scale is there. A typical sight: an American flag flies over a car dealership, just like they do…
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October 27 2005: Passed Ball (World Series wrap)
Well, it’s over. Really over. Last night, the White Sox poured champagne over one another’s heads, in the time-honored ritual that crowns a champion and ends the baseball season. It makes me sad. Not the White Sox, who played inspired baseball, who did it with pitching and magical, timely home runs. I’m happy for them….
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October 12 2005: Common Enemies
Well, baseball season is over. Oh, I know the Cardinals and the White Sox and people like that are still playing. But the Red Sox are out of it, and the Yankees are out of it, and call me a chauvinist, but this means that baseball has gone from a gripping must-see drama to a…
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September 26 2005: Go Fish (Wild card/pennant races)
Bob Costas is a smart man, but he was wrong about one thing. When the Wild Card was introduced to baseball, he said it would make down-to-the-wire pennant races like the ones he enjoyed in his youth a thing of the past. Well, try telling that to the Red Sox and Yankees, the Indians and…
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