Why I Like Baseball

AN ONLINE JOURNAL OF BASEBALL ENTHUSIASM, by CECILIA TAN

  • December 20 2000 : Think Back to April 15th…

    April 15th fell on a Saturday this year, giving every American two extra days to file income tax forms. Any Yankee fan who spent that afternoon doing taxes instead of listening to or watching the game, missed a nail-biter. Rain, cold mist, and 55 degree temperatures held the crowd to a mere 34,056 that day….

  • December 19 2000 : Think Back to April 3rd…

    In the 1990s, the Yankees often opened the season on the West Coast, and 2000 followed that precedent. ESPN brought Opening Day at Edison International Field into homes all across America, so loyal Yankees fans everywhere could see one of the Bombers’ four “aces,” Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez face a potent Anaheim line-up. Pumped up…

  • December 16 2000 : Think Back To March 30

    This is the first of a series of “think backs” I plan to do, to assuage the withdrawal pangs of the offseason for myself and the many fanatics out there. I share your pain. March 30th, 2000 found the Yankees at Enron Field in Houston, set to play the inaugural exhibition game at the new…

  • December 12 2000 : Is The Wait Over? (A-Rod and the Election)

    Baseball and the 2000 presidential election have been linked ever since the early campaigning of George W. Bush, who when asked what his greatest mistake in life was, joked: “trading Sammy Sosa” (back when Bush owned the Texas Rangers). The Sosa and Yale baseball references continued to pile up. In July, The Washington Post ran…

  • December 8 2000 : David’s Gone

    Well, that’s it, David Cone is moving on from the Yankees. They didn’t offer him arbitration, and so as of midnight a few hours ago, the team and he must go their separate ways. Even as I type those words, it hasn’t really sunk in yet. But I can definitely feel the ragged edges of…

  • November 14 2000 : Book Review of Women At Play, by Barbara Gregorich

    Did you know that since the beginning of any kind of organized baseball in America, there has been organized women’s baseball? That is, until the 1952, when minor league teams were outright banned from drafting female players–a ban that has never been rescinded. In 1974 girls were allowed into Little League, but since the fifties,…

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