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April 27 2000: Book Review – Slouching Towards Fargo
So, the other night, while sitting in the stands in the freezing cold wind of Yankee Stadium’s upper deck, my brother gave me my birthday present, lovingly wrapped in a page of the sports section of the local paper with Ken Griffey, Jr. photo large on it. (I couldn’t help but say, as I ripped…
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April 26 2000: Book Review – Ball Four
What do you mean you haven’t read Ball Four, the original baseball “tell-all” book by Jim Bouton? Okay, okay, I hadn’t read it either, until recently. I was a kid when it came out, young enough that I still had to be held by the hand by my Dad as we walked through Yankee Stadium….
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April 23 2000: Balancing Act
I close my eyes, listening to the game on the radio. I’m imagining I’m there at the ballpark. Let’s see. My butt is firmly planted in a molded, hard-plastic seat. On my right thigh rests my scorecard, on the left my gloved-up left hand. But, wait, where will I balance my hot dog? Where can…
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April 16 2000: Roar of the Crowd
Friday night I was sitting in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium with my friends and family, having an absolutely great time, despite the freezing cold wind that had us bundled in winter coats, gloves and earmuffs. It was not a large crowd for Yankee Stadium–the outfield decks blue and empty, the box seats checkered…
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April 15 2000: Pre-Game Show – Arriving Early at Yankee Stadium
April 14th finally arrived, the day of my first pilgrimage this year to the national temple of baseball, Yankee Stadium. (I was tickled to hear Michael Kay call it “baseball’s cathedral” on the radio the other day–seems I’m not the only one who holds the House That Ruth Built in such regard.) Originally I had…
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April 11: Old Timers – Baseball, Nostalgia & Respect
So, Charles Krauthammer recently opined in a column for TIME Magazine that baseball is dying, at least partly because of its love for nostalgia, and how we fans, supposedly, look back on the past as brighter and better than the present or future. Of course, the real point of the essay seemed to be that…
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