Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
A day late and a dollar short… By now most of you are familiar with my caveats, so I’ll just mention them briefly: The list includes only print editions (no kindle or audio versions) because I’m old school. Second, since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate […]
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I had the enormous good fortune to catch Claire Smith, the newest recipient of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award at the recent Society for American Baseball Research convention. Smith was the first African-American female reporter to cover baseball for a newspaper as a staffer with the Hartford Courant in 1983. She later became a columnist […]
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Sorry, don’t know how to make a backwards “R.” People love lists, so websites and blogs give the people what they want. Sometimes the lists come in one long page, other times you have to scroll through slide shows, thereby increasing your time on the site which helps their analytics. Don’t get me started on […]
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Because it’s not really news now, is it? So how should we respond when we read that Kevin Pillar, the outstanding defensive outfielder for the Toronto Blue Jays, was injured and placed on the 15-day disabled list. Yes, he was — in August. But this story in the Ottawa Citizen story carries a December 14 […]
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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 published this piece on one of my other blogs, The Worried Journalist. Just call me Double-Duty Kaplan.) When I was a kid I once got in in trouble for spending twice my allowance because I bought the latest issues of Baseball Digest and The Sporting News on the way back from running errands. […]
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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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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 […]
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If my mother were still alive, she’d probably have this framed and place it on a bookshelf.
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I guess there are a lot of fans there who think Divine Provenance is to credit for their their team winning the pennant. John Sexton, author of Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game, weighs in with the Chicago Tribune.
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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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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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Forgive the nihilism, but such is the meaninglessness of life. I was about to line the bottom of the birdcage this morning and just happened to notice that one of the pages carried the obituary for “Tom Knight, 89; Knew It All About Brooklyn Baseball.” The 750-plus-word New York Times tribute was written by by […]
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There’s a scene in the excellent baseball film Bull Durham in which Nuke LaLoosh, the prodigy pitcher, played by Tim Robbins, exults as he comes into the dugout after a strong inning of work. As he does so, his catcher, veteran baseball lifer Crash Davis, played by Kevin Costner, chews him out for all the […]
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It’s all well and good that the pace of games is picking up. According to Billy Witz in the Nov. 11 New York Times The pace of play rules that were instituted last season had an impact, shortening the average length of a game to 2 hours 56 minutes from 3:02, though [Major League Baseball’s […]
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You know a current event has gravitas when a pop culture entity like The Daily Show or Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me includes it in its weekly program. WWDTM referred to the recent computer hacking “scandal” by the St. Louis Cardinals in their most recent episode: PETER SAGAL: All right, here, sir, is your last […]
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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
