Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Used to be around this time of year you could look forward to the baseball annuals from Street & Smith, Athlon, Lindy’s, and a host of other magazine publishers. Of course, back in the day there were many others put out by the likes of The Sporting News, Major League Baseball, Bill Mazeroski, with Baseball […]
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Normally I wouldn’t post on Saturday but given that this article from Screen Rant is titled “10 Baseball TV Shows To Watch During The World Series” and the Series could be over tonight… Although if you’re at all interested in baseball, why would you want to watch shows about the game rather than the game […]
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It’s a funny thing about death. When you’re a kid, and you hear about some old ballplayer passing away, you don’t give it much thought. Even if you’re a big fan and know your history, you never saw these guys play so it doesn’t have the same existential effect (nor should it when you that […]
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As I mention in the conversation with comedian Adam Felber, one of the things I miss most about my previous job was the long commute which allowed me time to listen to lengthy podcasts. Chief among them was Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, the NPR news quiz show on which Felber was a regular panelist. […]
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Baseball Card Vandals: Over 200 Decent Jokes on Worthless Cards, by Beau Abbott and Bryan Abbott (Chronicle, 2020) As I was looking through various sites in an attempt to buy the latest set of Topps, I came across an old friend, Baseball Card Vandals, the brain child of brothers Beau and Bryan Abbott. I discovered […]
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Saturday mornings usually meant sitting in front of the TV with a bowl of cereal. Yada, yada, yada. Very sweet, very nostalgic. Well, it’s Saturday morning and I thought I’d use the occasion to offer a few items about our favorite sport. The first one, “Abner, the Baseball,” is at once charming, creepy, and ahead […]
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For whatever reason, M*A*S*H has long been one of my “comfort” TV programs. May seen kind of weird, latching on to an incongruous comedy about war. Oh, well. One of last night’s episodes on ME-TV — the cable station for aging baby boomers with shows like Perry Mason, Adam-12, The Flintstones, etc. — was “War […]
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Note: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish writing one). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes. In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one […]
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The Lost Art of Baseball Humor, by Gerard S. Petrone (Pocol Press, 2018) I think a lot of this book is lost on me. While Petrone obviously did a tremendous amount of research in compiling The Lost Art, much of it is not, in fact, humorous. What it is is a amazing and studious look […]
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Headnote: I’ve decided to bow to the times and include separate lists for e-books and audio books. Be aware that while many titles also appear in print versions, pretty much anyone can produce an e-book these days, so I’m not going to comment at all about the quality. As far as the audio goes, I’m […]
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I’ve decided to bow to the times and include separate lists for e-books and audio books. Be aware that while many titles also appear in print versions, pretty much anyone can produce an e-book these days, so I’m not going to comment at all about the quality. As far as the audio goes, I’m a […]
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Since you could technically watch a video if you have a TV or device on your bookshelf… Lewis Black is one of my favorite comedians. Smart, politically savvy, cranky, and old like me. And profane, so EXTREMELY FOUL LANGUAGE HERE!!! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED HT to Shawn R., himself a staunch Orioles fan, for the link.
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Skip to the relevant part at about 50 seconds…
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Whoda thunk it? But according to this piece –“Baseball Meets Horror” — by Bruce Markusen in the “Cooperstown Confidential” portion of The Hardball Times, yep.
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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In addition to the regular reasons — the signaling of the start of summer, the lazy evenings, the smell of the grass, etc. — I love the beginning of the baseball season because of the previews in the newspapers. These have often come in the form of supplements of substantial length and breadth and tailored, […]
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Make’s it official then. Abbot and Costello’s seminal “Who’s on First” routine was selected by Vulture as among the “The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy.” The jokes are listed in chronological order, not by funniest. In fact the title of the piece makes no promise along those lines. From the Vulture commentary: No single […]
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But I don’t know how to classify this bit of uber-trivia from Numbers Don’t Lie: Mets: The Biggest Numbers in Mets History, by Ross Cohen with Adam Raider. The chapter for “10” features Tom Seaver’s 10 consecutive strikeouts against the visiting San Diego Padres on April 22, 1970 and comes with this fun fact: Seaver […]
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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
