Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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A couple of weeks ago I visited a local shop that purportedly sold comics and baseball cards. Alas, I learned that was not the case. The owner told me there was no real business for cards over the past several years. I would say that that’s a shame but the reality is there have been […]
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The things one finds wandering down the rabbit hole. I was doing some research and just happened to come across the new film, Fielding Dreams: A Celebration of Baseball Scouts. It’s a fascinating look at an under-reported part of the game. The first thing I thought of was the scene in Moneyball in which Billy […]
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Apologies, chaverim. If I had my act together, this would have been done before Channuka. Oh, well. You know what they say about the road to hell. Similarly, if I was still working in the Jewish media, this would have been a pretty major story. Ryan Lavarnway, a prototypical backup catcher, enjoyed a ten-year career […]
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One of the main concerns when MLB announced it would incorporate Negro League statistics into the official canon was “How?” It seemed there were a bunch of problems with that noble effort to recognize Black baseball on a more equal level with the Majors, but the lack of coverage made that difficult. The Black media […]
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My, how times have changed. When A League of Their Own came out in 1992, it did so without much reference to “coming out.” While the vastly popular film did bring much deserved yet overlooked attention to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, one of the contemporary complaints is that it did not address the […]
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As I sadly acknowledge in the video, history should be a lot older than me. Fifty years takes up a major portion of my life which means I’m old. Anyway… John Rosengren, author of The Greatest Summer in Baseball History: How the ’73 Season Changed Us Forever, had to explain the use of “forever,” one […]
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If I couldn’t have a career as a major league player, I think I like to have Marty Appel‘s resume (perhaps after Roger Angell). Appel began as the kid who answered Mickey Mantle’s fan mail (and wouldn’t you like to get a peek at some of those?). He eventually became the Yankees’ PR director under […]
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Whenever I think about the work in Lee Lowenfish’s new book, Baseball’s Endangered Species: Inside the Craft of Scouting by Those Who Lived It, I am always reminded of the scene from Moneyball where old battles with new: In my conversation with Lowenfish, I referenced my own images of scouts from movies like The Stratton […]
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To paraphrase from a Thomas Boswell classic, “Time Begins on Opening Day.” In Michael Ortman‘s case, multiply that times 50. One of the things I wanted to ask the author of Opening Day: 50-for-50: One Fan, One Game, A Half-Century of Baseball Stories was how his approach to the game has changed over time. Like […]
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Man, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a catch. I stopped playing competitive softball almost five years ago. Then COVID (I actually bought a Pitchback for the yard and used it maybe a couple of times). Then the accident (the resulting arm injuries make it painful to throw). So I was a bit […]
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I’ve probably said this before when talking about an artist: I don’t know the medium but I know what I like. And I like Dave Choate’s work. Quirky. That’s how I would describe it, no offense intended if anyone takes it as such. This particular Conversation came about after I bought some of his work […]
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While I was chatting with Jon Leonoudakis about his latest documentary, Ball Four Turns 40, I remembered that one of my earliest interviews was with Jim Bouton. This was in the pre-Covid, Pre-Zoom days when I was doing everything on a digital tape recorder over the phone or in person (and the fidelity or lack […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In my most recent "day job," I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted another blog. Busy, busy, busy.
I did a profile piece on the award-winning cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
My article on the later biographies of Babe Ruth appears in
My article on the Mets’ 1969 postseason appears in
Profiles of several Jewish baseball figures appear in
