Why I Like Baseball

About Cecilia Tan
Cecilia Tan has been writing professionally since she was a teenager in the mid-1980s, when she sold articles, interviews, and photographs to teen magazines like Teen Machine and wrote a monthly column for Superteen.

She established herself as a science fiction/fantasy writer and editor in the 1990s, but found her passion for baseball kept bringing her back to that subject. Cecilia began writing about baseball in her mid-thirties, when the McGwire/Sosa home run race and the Joe Torre Yankees rekindled her childhood interest in the sport. She began with a weekly column for YankeesXtreme.com (the subscription website of the New York Yankees before the creation of MLB.com) and eventually wrote features for Yankees Magazine. In 2005 she became the Yankees beat writer for Gotham Baseball Magazine, and as a senior writer provides a weekly team report and a column of Yankees observations for www.GothamBaseball.com called “Good Eye.” Also in 2005, her book on the history of the New York Yankees, The 50 Greatest Yankee Games was published by Wiley. The paperback followed in 2006, along with a followup book, The 50 Greatest Red Sox Games, co-authored with Bill Nowlin.

In 2007, she became the editor of the Bombers Broadside, an annual look at the New York Yankees, for Maple Street Press, and also wrote several articles in the publication, including the preview of the 2007 season and profiles of Andy Pettitte and Derek Jeter. In 2009 the publication changed name to the Maple Street Press Yankee Annual. Cecilia Tan continues as editor of the magazine and writes the annual roster preview for it. She also served as associate editor on MSP’s The Ultimate Yankees Companion, a team encyclopedia for which she wrote many player biographies.

Starting in 2008 she has been a staff writer of the Baseball Early Bird, a daily morning newsletter for baseball lovers that includes recaps of the night’s previous games, historical trivia, a snippet of stats, and insightful pieces about International, minor/independent league, Little league, and other forms of baseball, too. (Subscribe here.)

She has several Red Sox-related editing projects under her belt as well, having co-edited with Bill The Fenway Project (Rounder Books, 2004) and ‘75: The Red Sox Team That Saved Baseball. She contributed biographies of Elston Howard and Gary Bell to The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox (Rounder Books, 2006), and was also the book’s copyeditor.

She is a member of the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM), the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), and the National Writers Union (NWU).

Some Baseball-Related Publications:

• In Baseball’s Greatest Rivalry, ed. by Harvey Frommer and Frederick Frommer, new edition forthcoming
  “The Duel,” article on May 28, 2000 grudge match between Pedro/Clemens
• Mudville Magazine, Feburary 2003
  “Singin’ the Blues,” article on MLB public relations, umpiring and the QuesTec system
• Yankees Magazine, the official scorecard magazine sold in Yankee Stadium–various articles:
  • Interview feature on 1962 W.S. MVP pitcher Ralph Terry
  • Feature article on Luis Sojo career retrospective
  • Special piece on “star” spring training instructors
• Baseball Ink magazine
  “Baseball Time” September 2000, Vol. 2, No. 2

Other Positions Held

• Staff writer, Yankeebaseball.net–September 2001 to May 2003
  Wrote game recaps, post-season previews, spring training reports, and other pieces for front page of this online team site. (Site now defunct.)
• Columnist, Yankees Xtreme–June 2000 through October 2000
  Provided a weekly column to the official pay-subscription site of the New York Yankees (prior to MLB.com closing the individual team sites.)