Why I Like Baseball

AN ONLINE JOURNAL OF BASEBALL ENTHUSIASM, by CECILIA TAN

  • Mar 14 2000: Spring Training Day Six – Dunedin

    Dunedin’s stadium (Grant Field) was the closest to the house of all the places we went. It was about seven miles, actually, so even though we went early to the game to see BP and fielding practice, we didn’t have to leave very early. We did our best to eat up the food in the…

  • Mar 13 2000: At Last, At Last – Spring Training Day One

    I don’t even know where to start. It’s Monday, March 13th today, and I’m in denial about the fact that I am in my office in Boston, it’s 39 degrees outside, and I’m not going to see another baseball game until April 13th. More specifically, I’m finding it hard to believe that today I’m not…

  • Feb 29 2000: Offseason Blues: Part 2

    So my brother Julian calls today, and we’re talking about our trip to Tampa next week. “I’m thinking about bringing some baseballs,” he says. For a moment I’m thinking, will we need gloves and bats, too? Then I realize, oh, for autographs… “But there’s a problem,” he tells me. “If we want these to be…

  • Feb 27 2000: Spring Dreams

    I know I don’t leave for Tampa for another seven days, but you know what I did last night instead of my taxes? I packed for my trip. Unbelievable, I know. But there’s a fully packed suitcase sitting in my room right now, full of shorts and tank tops and other hot weather clothing that…

  • Feb 26 2000: Why I Never Played Ball

    You know what has never made sense to me? Baseball is for boys and softball is for girls. This doesn’t make sense because boys have much, much bigger hands than girls. I have such tiny hands that I have trouble keeping a softball in my hand. A baseball, on the other hand, fits alright. I…

  • Feb 25 2000: The Strawberry Rocker Soap Opera

    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 interview, where he offended just about everyone with his racist, homophobic, and generally ass-headed comments. It has been interesting to see how few people…

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