Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
This popped up on my daily Google alerts for baseball book-related stuff from Fine Books & Collections: “Early Baseball Sheet Music, Arrowsmith’s Maps, JFK Presentation Copy: Auction Preview” Image: Potter & Potter — “The earliest known baseball lithograph, for “The Live Oak Polka,” offered at Potter & Potter this week.” According to the accompanying story […]
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♦ The Baseball Hall of Fame will hold a screening of Fielding Dreams: A Celebration of Baseball Scouts on Thursday, Jan. 18. “[T]his new documentary goes beyond moneyball [sic] and features dozens of interviews with some of the scouting legends of the game, including 5 scouts who helped build the 2023 World Series Champion Texas […]
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♦ Soon to be a major motion picture? “For Maggi, 1st MLB hit proves ‘you can do anything’” ♦ The ReviewGeek judges Cross Game, by Mitsuru Adachi, among the best sport mangas. ♦ Speaking of the late Vin Scully, how will you do on this quiz about baseball broadcasters from the Chicago Sun-Times? Warning: it […]
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When it comes to baseball. Of course, much of that was due to Roger Angell‘s excellent essays. Yes, there have been other contributors, but none with the gravitas or tenure of Angell. There have been plenty of covers and cartoons about the national pastime. Many, of the former, including the cover of the current issue, […]
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Heard on NPR’s Morning Edition show, March 6: “Evan Drellich’s new book sheds light on the Houston Astros cheating scandal.” I usually don’t mix baseball with politics with baseball (unless it’s in a good way), but this is important enough to me that I don’t care if I ruffle a few feathers by […]
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Does anyone else have these? I have a number of posters that I’ve been hanging in the stairwell to my basement office and came across these 2′ x 3′ jobs that I can only imagine acquiring via sending in box tops from Kelloggs cereals. They’re kind of cool but as the last images are from […]
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♦ Ron Shelton’s The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit is among USA Today’s “Best Books of 2022.” Here’s our Bookshelf Conversation with Shelton. Meanwhile, True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson by Kostya Kennedy and The Grandest Stage: A History of […]
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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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Dead at 94. His portrait of Joe DiMaggio has appeared in numerous books about baseball art, including the cover of From The New York Times obituary by Richard Sandomir …Mr. Dinnerstein largely depicted the life around him: on the subway, in parks, outside brownstones like his own in Brooklyn. In a rare foray into portraying […]
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In a 12-month period that has seen the passing of numerous Hall of Famers, it’s nice to be able to wish a happy 90th birthday to Willie Mays. James Hirsch, who wrote Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, the most recent bio of the “greatest living player,” contributed this essay to The New York Times, which […]
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Just renewed the domain for another year, so to make it worthwhile I guess I should be posting more often, and not just “Lest We Forget.” I don’t seem to have the free time to read as I did when I was working as a journalist, which is kind of weird, considering these days I’m […]
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According to a translation site, the header above (pronounced “fushigina hōkō e korogaru”) is the Japanese equivalent of “down the rabbit hole,” which is where I fell after finding a story about Shinji Mizushima, “author of the popular Japanese ‘Dokaben‘ baseball manga series, [who] decided to end his career as a manga artist Tuesday, his […]
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Given that I have three books out and worked as a newspaper reporter/editor, I guess that serves as proof that I can put words together, but when it comes to art, I can barely draw a straight line with a ruler. I didn’t inherit that gene from my father, who was an excellent sketcher. Then […]
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Regular visitors know that I usually post a Baseball Best-Sellers list on Fridays. These feature the top 10 titles according to Amazon in print, e-books (Kindle), and audio formats. Amazon offers lists for paid and free books in the e-book category. (Here’s an explanation of why some books are offered for free. Still trying to […]
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I’ve been collecting baseball cards for most of my life; not as much these days because I’m a grown-ass adult. For the most part, they have all been the same: a photograph surrounded by the annual change in design. More recently, a number of companies have joined Topps, coming out with multiple sets, almost ad […]
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Red Foley’s Cartoon History of Baseball. Illustrated by S.B. Whitehead (Little Simon/Simon & Schuster, 1992) When I posted about Alex Irvine’s The Comic Book Story of Baseball, I also had Red Foley’s book in mind. Foley, a longtime sportswriter and official scorer, published this lively little number in a relatively more innocent era. The players […]
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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
