WHY I LIKE BASEBALL has a new address! Please click on: www.WhyILikeBaseball.com to see the latest entries! This page will temporarily house the old entries, the archive which runs from 2000 through the end of the 2007 season, until we port them over to the new site. Please visit our new site to keep up with all the baseball fun from February 2008 on! The Archived Entries: 2000 - 2007 October 7, 2007: ALDS Game 3 "When the Yankees win at Yankee Stadium in October, it's the best party in the world. I know it is only the first round of playoffs, and I know they still face elimination tomorrow, but the smiles, cheers, and good times rolled tonight..." Football Tickets * Concert Tickets September 24, 2007: Love Rules "It was a day of love at Yankee Stadium on Sunday. It began with an outpouring of love for someone recently departed from the family, Phil Rizzuto. While many members of the Rizzuto family watched from seats of honor near home plate, the scoreboard played a highlight montage from Phil's career as player and as broadcaster. The music they chose couldn't have been more fitting: "That's Amore." But what struck me most that day was the way the fans have embraced one of the youngest, newest members of the family, Joba Chamberlain." September 22, 2007: Long Night "I have a credo, which is that any game in which your team gets the tying run to the plate in the ninth inning is a good game. By extension any game in which your team gets the winning run to the plate is pretty darn good also, and getting that man to cross the plate? Well, that would make it a great game. The Yankees game in the Bronx last night was a good game..." September 21, 2007: Seasonal Color "In this age of digital photography, I really should have been documenting this better. But at the time, I really did not know that it would have Pennant Race Implications. I'm talking about my hair..." August 26, 2007: Dom DiMaggio Interview "I woke up this morning from a dream that Dominic DiMaggio had passed away. I'm certain this is my brain still working through the loss of The Scooter in recent weeks. I never had a chance to interview Phil Rizzuto, but I did interview Dom DiMaggio not that long ago. So I thought I'd share with you some words from a true veteran of The Rivalry and one of the last standard bearers of a great generation of baseball players..." July 2, 2007: Mechanical Failure "The other day in a game against the Yankees, Shannon Stewart of the Oakland A's made a weak throw from left field, allowing a run to score and a runner on second base to move to third. The game's broadcasters mentioned that Stewart's shoulder is injured, and has been "for years." How, one might think, could a guy still be playing with such a weakness and why hasn't he done anything about it? Well, I don't know about Stewart's arm, but I know about mine..." June 28, 2007: Out Standing In a Field (again) "Oh, I ache everywhere, but especially in my forty-year-old legs. Slaterettes Baseball season has begun and I feel like I put the "senior" in the "Senior Division." I played right field two days in a row. (Who the heck put two games in a row on the schedule? Oh, my aching muscles...)" June 3 2007: Community Values "I had dinner last night at Dominck's on Arthur Avenue, a Bronx Italian-food institution where there is no menu, they only take cash, and there's an hour wait for a table for dinner on Saturday night. Last night as we climbed the steps up to the waiting room, Doug Mientkiewicz was on the ground being examined by Gene Monahan, the Yankees' team trainer, and the lead had slipped away. In the time it had taken us to walk from the car to the restaurant, the score had gone from 6-5 Yanks to 7-6 Sox. "What the hell happened?" I asked a guy sitting at the bar, but he was A) Clearly not from New York as he seemed taken aback to have a stranger talk to him. (Get used to it, buddy.) and B) Not a Yankee fan, as he hadn't the foggiest idea..." May 22 2007: Warming Up "Who knew that winning two games in a row would feel so darn good? Maybe it's like hot and cold. They say if you put one hand in cold water and one hand in hot water, and then put them both in the same bowl of lukewarm water, the cold hand will think it's hot and the hot hand will think it's cold. Maybe this is just another one of nature's ways to point out that it's all in your point of view. For example, Alex Rodriguez..." April 29 2007: Odds on Evens "One of the baseball adages oft-repeated by grizzled third-base coaches and Little League parents alike is 'it all evens out.' Those screaming liners that were caught, robbing a hit, even out by those soft dribblers that the infield can't get to. Well, Yankees fans and Red Sox fans alike know that the disparity between the two teams' championships is unlikely to ever 'even out.' A popular shirt in the Bronx reads 'Got rings?' and points up the difference between 26 and 6. But this is little consolation to citizens of the pinstriped empire as their team as of this morning had lost seven in a row, including four meetings in a row now with these same Boston Red Sox..." March 10 2007: Simple Pleasures "It was a tidy little game at Legends Field tonight. The Yankees scored four runs in the second, in a nine-man inning kicked off by Alex Rodriguez. Alex had a much better day than Wednesday, tonight playing flawlessly in every respect both offensively and defensively. Also, everyone in the audience--in my section anyway--noticed that tonight he played with his socks high..." March 7 2007: Sprung! "At Legends Field tonight, people were complaining of the cold. The temperatures were in the mid-sixties, the wind on the cool side. Speaking as someone who left Boston yesterday where it was eight--yes (8)--degrees with a wind chill of minus-thirty, all I can say is: hah! It's lovely here in Tampa and don't you forget it! The game, like the temperatures, was not so hot, being scoreless for seven innings, but as any newcomer to Spring Training quickly learns, winning and scoring runs is not what its about..." Most Popular Entries: March 22 2005: Rock On "The Red Sox are rock stars. That seems to be the consensus among the team, its fans, and the media horde that has been following them and growing all the time. My second visit to Fort Myers provided ample proof..." March 18 2004: Camp Follower "What fan wouldn't want to be a fly on the wall of the Yankees clubhouse, where Mickey Rivers pranks the players (and writers) daily, or the batting cages while Don Mattingly deconstructs Tony Clark's swing and Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter talk trash about each other's college basketball picks while they wait to hit? Here are my memories of a month spent in Yankee camp..." March 6 2003: Bambino Roadtrip, Day One "When I arrived at Boston's Logan airport this morning, the roads were crackling with fresh ice and the forecast was for snow. When I stepped onto the tarmac three hours later at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, the air was moist with balmy rain. Folks here tell me it's unusually cold for this time of year, but you won't hear me complaining. Suddenly, my brain is thawed and I can think about baseball again. I am here in North Carolina to begin a drive through the the south in search of baseball landmarks." July 15 2001: I Got Called Up Today "I picked the wrong morning to sleep through my alarm today. As I opened the refrigerator, wondering idly what I should eat, I pressed the mail button on my cell phone. The message was from one of the women's baseball league organizers and was about two hours old. It said: Hope you're coming to today's game. The Blitz have only eight players and will forfeit the game if they can't get another one. Bring your cleats." Welcome to the archive site of "Why I Like Baseball," a journal of essays, reminiscences, adventures and other writings on the sport of baseball. I think of it as "everything I ever wanted to know about baseball and wasn't afraid to ask." I launched the site on February 13, 2000, the first day that Chicago Cubs pitchers and catchers were due to report for Spring Training. It was a long, dark, cold off-season, and I needed something to keep my baseball fire burning. I've been writing professionally for almost twenty years, but it was the first time I wrote about baseball. I wrote about my memories of growing up a Yankee fan in the 70s, my thoughts on the way the game has changed, on women in baseball, and many other topics. I convinced my father and brother to take a trip to Florida for Spring Training, and kept a journal of our adventures there. And once the season started, I began to write about my many other experiences, from Yankee Stadium to the minor leagues, from my own attempts to play baseball and wiffle ball, to my thoughts on players and teams. Since that time, I have had various professional baseball writing gigs, but so little of what is published on baseball these days (in newspapers, magazines, or even on other web sites) involves personal narrative, that I have kept up Why I Like Baseball. New entries are now appearing at our new URL: www.WhyILikeBaseball.com so this page now serves as the nexus to the archive of old entries, running from 2000 - 2007. Please let me know if you enjoyed the site, or if you had any problems loading it, by email to "ctan.writer" +at+ gmail. Thanks! Copyright © 2000 - 2007 Cecilia Tan

Cubs tickets Mets tickets Rangers tickets MLB tickets World Series tickets Online Casino Why I Like Baseball An Online Journal of Baseball Writing ISSN 1539-7939 Baseball tickets Red Sox tickets Yankees tickets Concert tickets Sell tickets Help Keep Us Online! Make A $1 Donation: Search Now: More Great Baseball Sites: Futility Infielder Batters Box Baseball Blogs Baseball News Blogs Baseball Musings Yankees Fan Sites and Forums: Jorge Posada Fan Site! Where to Find More Sites/Directories Open Directory Project Baseball Pages Sports Resource Zone Baseball Links John Skilton's Baseball Links The Real Sports Network, baseball fan pages