Why I Like Baseball

AN ONLINE JOURNAL OF BASEBALL ENTHUSIASM, by CECILIA TAN

  • Mar 23 2000: Does Every Fan Secretly Wish…?

    So I learned about an amazing thing today. Women’s Major League Baseball. Right here in New England there’s the WNEBL, Women’s New England Baseball League, and according to American Women’s Baseball League there are women’s leagues/teams in fourteen states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Ohio,…

  • Mar 19 2000: What To Tell Your Friends Who Think Baseball is Boring/Wimpy

    Alright, if you’re one of those people who doesn’t understand baseball, who thinks it’s boring and nothing ever happens, here’s what you need to know if you’re ever kidnapped and forced to watch a game and would like to at least try to enjoy it. George Carlin aside, if what you need to get hooked…

  • Mar 17 2000: Spring Training Day Five – Day Without Baseball #2

    So, as mentioned above, we couldn’t get Braves tickets. And as with the Red Sox game we missd,the Yanks creamed ’em (this time like 24 to 7 or something). Apparently, the Braves had a split squad day, and sent all their rookies to Legends Field. Steinbrenner reportedly went “ballistic” over the dis, but hey, the…

  • Mar 16 2000: Spring Training Day Four – Sarasota

    After the game in Clearwater, we dropped Dad off at the airport and he went back to New Jersey (he’d already been on vacation when we met him, playing golf in Orlando, so we had to let him get back to work). That evening we were supposed to pick up corwin (my significant other) and…

  • Mar 15 2000: Spring Training Day Three – Clearwater

    Among the games we did NOT see in our week in Florida were the Red Sox game in Fort Myers and the Braves game at Legends Field. Despite my best and earliest efforts, both games were sold out before I could get tickets. So technically, Day Three of our vacation was a Day Without Baseball,…

  • Mar 14 2000: Spring Training Day Two – Legends Field

    On March 7th we got up early with the intention of getting to Legends Field in time to see morning batting practice. We really didn’t know what to expect, only that we’d heard that practice started 3 hours prior to games. So we pulled our rental car on the gargantuan parking field adjacent to Raymond…

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