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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While looking for Robert Benson’s The Game for last week’s BBS post, I found my collection of baseball annuals, specifically Street and Smith’s Official Baseball Yearbook for 1975. What a treat. The articles included profiles of Frank Robinson and designated hitters; Lou Brock’s 118 stolen bases and the impact that had on other thieves in […]
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What is this world coming to? It was bad enough when Sports Illustrated laid off many of the staff that made the magazine “illustrated” to begin with. I was bad enough when it went from a weekly to a bi-weekly to a monthly to just online. But now? “Sports Illustrated lays off most of its […]
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Since it was fairly moderate yesterday I decided to tool around the attic in yet another attempt to purge. That’s where I have the bulk of my library as well as other baseball-related items, including a foot locker of baseball cards. Problem with trying to clean up is that you get caught up in a […]
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Every now and then I think of what might have been. I paid for my wife’s engagement ring with the money I received by selling my 1968 Topps set. A good investment. People of my generation know what other goodies came with the cards at a time when it was rare to just buy a […]
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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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From Forbes: “Vintage Baseball Volumes To Bring High Prices At Rare Books Fair.” From Valley News, which covers the Vermont/New Hampshire area: “Baseball odyssey: Book recounts summer of epic road trip.” From the Culpeper, VA Star Exponent: “Pete Hill: Black Baseball’s First Superstar features Culpeper Hall of Fame slugger In Publisher’s Weekly, author David Kelly […]
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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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And it is holiday time… Babe Ruth baseball glove sells at auction for record $1.53 million. Not quite as expensive ($44 each plus a flat-rate shipping charge of $8 per order). National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum honors Hank Aaron And how appropriate is it that these two legends appear together in this […]
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As in Library of Congress. Just received this email from Darren Jones, reference librarian for that august institution and am happy to pass it along: Dear Baseball Enthusiasts: With the start of the 2021 World Series later this month, we want to share with you some online resources from the Library of Congress about the […]
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Keith Hernandez has had an unfortunate accident. This comes on the heels of last week’s Ron Blomberg Laundry Fiasco. By the way, I decided to keep that card as a reminder. I know, it’s a paradox. Just another reminder of life’s impermanence.
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Pardon me while I wax philosophical for a moment. I recently experienced a blow-out on the Garden State Parkway on the way to work at five o’clock in the morning. I was able to creep to the nearest exit and maneuver into the parking lot of a convenience store from which I called AAA. In […]
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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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My baseball library is divided into three main sections: the attic, my basement office, and the rest of the house. I was cleaning the attic yesterday, because what else is there to do? While trying to cull the herd, putting things in boxes to eventually give away or ::shudder:: throw out, I can across a […]
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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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One of the things I do collect are baseball caps. But the rule is that the purchase — either by I myself or a friend who’s getting it as a gift — has to be made in the city where the team is based. I rotate them often but after reading this, I wonder if […]
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As baseball card collectors of a certain age know, Topps used to include various premiums in every pack of cards. I’m talking about the mid-60s to mid 70s, I’m guessing, although a Google search shows that the company has been revisiting past successes by offering some of these things again. One year it could be […]
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We have a calendar at Trader Joe’s on which is listed — in addition to staff birthdays (yay!) — various “national days,” such as “National Chocolate Milk Day” or “National Cheesecake Day.” (Are there corresponding greeting cards for all the occasions?) I’m betting that some of these are created by the industries which they encompass. […]
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You will forgive a father’s pride, but my daughter, Rachel, a photo editor for iHeart Media, recently compiled this listicle on baseball bobbleheads. I still haven’t gotten over her being a Yankees fan, though. Oh well, can’t have everything.
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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
This is progress?
February 8, 2022
Apropos of my recent post about the things we keep, don’t keep, or don’t get in the first place, I went ahead and purchased a copy of the 2021 Mets yearbook. I was especially curious because of the whole 2020 season having been played under a Covid cloud. Sadly, but not entirely unexpectedly, it was […]
Tagged as: New York Mets
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