Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Value Over Replacement Grit offers a baseball-themed crossword puzzle. At the risk of appearing sexist, I must say this is the first time I’ve encountered a woman who collects baseball cards with such a passion as Cee Angi, who wrote this mournful “Requiem for the 00s: The Decline of Topps Baseball Cards,” in which she [...]
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I will always have a soft spot for Mental Floss, the publication that assigned me my first cover story (which you can read here from a very early attempt at a website. I’m amazed it’s still available.) So here’s their latest baseball quiz, with Jeter as the focus. I missed four of the 11 players
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(Maybe that should be “Don’t Taft me, bro.”) Our favorite NPR program featured piece of baseball this trivia in its “Not My Job” segment with guest Duke Fatir of The Four Tops. The three questions all had to do with “bottoms” (heh). * * * PETER SAGAL: Last question, President William Howard Taft had the [...]
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Right Off the Bat: Baseball, Cricket, Literature, and Life, by Evander Lomke and Martin Rowe. Paul Dry Books, 2011. As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been fascinated by cricket longer than I can remember. During a visit to Montreal when I was 10, I recall buying a small British import at a WH Smith [...]
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I contributed a couple of pieces to Mental Floss (including the July-Aug. 2002 cover story for “The Spy Issue”) when they were just knee-high to more established magazines. So I have a soft spot for the publication even if they don’t answer my calls anymore (sniff, sniff). They’ve greatly expanded and now offer a bunch [...]
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Found this quiz created Prof. Stephen R. Shalom from the William Paterson University via a link on the Mental Floss blog. Enjoy. There was a question about football, but I removed it as per my “mission statement.” * * * These are not your standard sports trivia questions. To answer these you’ll need to know [...]
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“There’s no tomorrow, so it’s one of those things where you go out there and leave nothing in the tank.” That was Boston Red Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis. And virtually every athlete you will talk to about a Game 7 will say some variation of the same thing. So while we’re on the subject [...]
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That’s the question posed by “The Fabulous Forum: The who, what, where, when, why — and why not — of L.A. sports,” from The Los Angeles Times. The lines in question: A curio: Red Sox Beat Yanks 5-4 On Chapman’s Homer, thumbtacked to the door Blogger Brian Croning goes on to opine on just what [...]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com, as of Friday, Dec. 17 at 1 p.m. Title Rank General The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 2 Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh [...]
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One of my favorite off-beat baseball sites is Craig Robinson’s Flip Flop Flyball. (I wrote about Robinson and his work awhile back.) Rather than the usual staid numbers, Robinson — a graphic artist originally from Great Britain — takes unusual items and turns them into colorful graphic representations. Among the topics he’s considered on the [...]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Dec. 3 at Title Rank General The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 1 Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton with Tim Keown 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by [...]
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As the days dwindle down to a precious few, here’s an attempt at a major catch-up: I met Rob Fitts at the SABR convention in Washington, DC, last year. His specialty is Japanese baseball. Here’s his site on baseball cards. The NY Times‘ Alan Schwarz covered the convention’s always-entertaining trivia contest. You know the theoretical [...]
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The Mental Floss website offers these quizzes: Did he throw a no-hitter? The Simpsons softball quiz The baseball card brand quiz
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Take the quiz. Lotsa luck.
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, July 2. Title Rank General Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 1 Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball, by Bill Madden 2 The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by Scott Turbow [...]
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There are several popular drinking games around; one of my favorite focuses on the television show Lost. Since there are so many similar themes in baseball books, I though I’d try my hand a creating one of my own. So with your kind indulgence: If someone refers to Jaques Barzun and/or the quote: “Whoever wants [...]
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if not a tiny scoreboard. Mental Floss, a bright and funny publication in which a couple of my articles have appeared (and one day again, I hope. Hint, hint, Mental Floss; I have no shame) published this brief history on the evolution of the scoreboard. The piece also links to some other cool baseball items, [...]
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is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.
In my "day job," I'm the features and sports editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper. I'm also the editor of the Bibliography Committee Newsletter for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
I did a piece on the award-winning cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
Congratulations to Charles P. of Long Island City, NY, winner of the most recent Facebook Fan drawing, The Might Have Been: A Novel
Next up: Long Shot
Tell your friends!
My article on the later biographies of Babe Ruth appears in
My article on the Mets' 1969 post-season appears in
What I just read:
Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race
Well-intentioned, but somewhat disappointing in delivery of the intended message. B-.
What I'm reading now
Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age
First Impressions: Too soon to tell.
What I'm RE-reading now
Play for a Kingdom
What's next:
Gil Hodges: The Brooklyn Bums, the Miracle Mets, and the Extraordinary Life of a Baseball Legend
Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game
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Trivia pursuit
August 23, 2010 · 0 comments
Bleacher Report ran this slide show on The Top 10 MLB Players Immortalized in Obscure Trivia.Very cool. Goodness knows I regularly encounter two or three trivia titles/”brain teasers” on the remainder table of my local Barnes and Noble, either on the game in general or a team or some other topic within a topic. The [...]
Tagged as: trivia books
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