Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
I was chatting with a co-worker who is about to go to Seattle for vacation. One of the items on his agenda is attending Comic-Con. Seems he’s a collector of Funko figures. Who knew? Evidently these are like the next generation of Beanie Babies. There are probably hundreds of these things, and some of them […]
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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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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 […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
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 […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
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 […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Fifteen bobbleheads for $300 seems like a bargain. (especially when you can buy them individually for $25 bucks apiece) but when you see that these are figurines from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, it’s a true find. Teams represented include: Rockford Peaches Chicago Colleens Battle Creek Belles Grand Rapids Chicks Fort Wayne Daisies South […]
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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 […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
If you’re looking for the perfect gift for the Jewish sports fan, you can’t do much better than The Jewish Baseball Card Book, by Bob Wechsler. Based on the popular Jewish card sets produced by Martin Abramowitz (who helped on the project along with Peter McDonald), this coffee table edition features photos and brief stories […]
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Brought to you by Kellogg’s 3-D Super Star’s card set, as told by Scott Ferkovich on The National Pastime Museum site. I have a set of these in a footlocker up in the attic. Funny how “modern” they seemed at the time. There were a number of companies that put out their own sets of […]
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This story from The New York Times about the baseball card hobby goes from A (Jeff Aeder, aka the prospective buyer) to Z (Guy Zinn, the rare item in question). It also comes on the heels of a discovery I had in my attic while looking for books to donate to the nearby Yogi Berra […]
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From time to time, I’ve written about trying to “cull the herd,” i.e., getting rid of some of the hundreds and hundreds of books I’ve accumulated over the years. Despite the collection, I do not consider myself a “collector.” I know I’m never going to acquire every baseball book ever published. Not even every book […]
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With apologies to Louis Jordan… Just because baseball’s winter meetings are over doesn’t mean player transactions are, too. Rumors are still swirling and let’s face it, it’s kind of fun when players switch teams (unless it’s your favorite who departs, one way or the other). And it made me think of this: When I was […]
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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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When I was a kid, there was only Topps. And only one set of Topps. Now there are so many, of varying degrees of quality and inteerest, it’s hard to keep up. Case in point: the 2017 Inception set. Maybe this is all a dream.
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It’s been said about Moe Berg that he could speak seven (or 10 or 12) languages but couldn’t hit in any of them. Baseball signed by World War II spy sells for over $17,000 Upshot: One of only two baseballs known to be signed by Moe Berg, a former major league catcher who served as […]
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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 […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
What is it, two days after the Cubs won the series and while compiling the (usually) weekly list of baseball best-sellers, there are publications about the team that weren’t even listed when I did my search for items coming down the pike (although, to be strictly accurate, I was basically looking at 2017 items). So […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
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 […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Here’s a sample of a regular card from the 2016 Topps series: It’s all right, but I start thinking about television commercials and how much is “enhanced” by computers. You can throw in all the bells and whistles you want, but it doesn’t necessarily make for a superior product. Now here’s one from their 2016 […]
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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
