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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If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know my affection for the NPR news quiz, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. And every now and then, they’ll throw me a bone my including some baseball content. Examples include an interview with Moose Skowron which led me down a rabbit hole when it comes […]
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Because you can put your baseball cap on a shelf: From the ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION BEWILDERED BY ATHLEISURE AND BASEBALL CAPS DEAR MISS MANNERS: Returning to the United States after several years of living in Europe, I have noticed that “athleisure” wear is acceptable everywhere, and that wearing baseball hats in restaurants (done by people […]
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Come on, you can’t blame FOX for reporting on the death of The Big Hurt, mistaking him for the other Frank Thomas. What, you expect them to actually, like, fact check? It’s so ridiculous that even this British news outlet reported on it: “Fox News apologises after claiming baseball MLB Hall of Famer had died” […]
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Taking some time off in Pittsfield, MA, to celebrate 35th anniversary with the missus. Right across the street from our lodgings is a Stop and Shop. Was hoping visit Wacunah Park but these days it’s used by one of the pre-pre college leagues/teams. And t’isnt the season. But there is a great store in Pittsfield — […]
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How long until journalists are totally replaced by AI? This piece from BVMSports.comabout Joe Posnanski’s new book, Why We Love Baseball, comes with the disclaimer, “The summary of the linked article was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence technology from OpenAI.” According to the site’s “About” link, “BVM Sports is a media entity dedicated […]
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♦ It’s been a very long time since I wrote about the Baseball Project, “a supergroup that includes several former members of R.E.M. and makes music exclusively about the sport,” according to this new article from The New Yorker. ♦ Hot on the heels of the new Netflx documentary The Saint of Second Chances this […]
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I used to be so good in math. I don’t know what happened. Oh, sure, I can figure out most of the standard baseball stats, although I’ve always arched my eyebrows at the formulas offered in such books as Encyclopedia of Baseball Statistics: From A to Zr or Beyond Batting Average. One of the first […]
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One hundred. It’s a nice, round number. Picking from the thousands of moments in baseball history is a daunting task. Those who take it on have a responsibility to do the due diligence to separate the merely good from the truly magnificent. Kind of like parsing out true Hall of Famers from those who just […]
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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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A reminder: 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 posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes. (See my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks.”) In addition, occasionally […]
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The Ballpark Bucket List: The Ultimate Scorecard for Visiting All 30 Major League Parks, by James Buckley Jr. How to describe this fun little volume? While it is technically a book, it’s more like a diary, a chance to note a fan’s ambitious goal of visiting every stadium in the big leagues. Each of the […]
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Heard on NPR’s Morning Edition show, March 6: “Evan Drellich’s new book sheds light on the Houston Astros cheating scandal.” I usually don’t mix baseball with politics with baseball (unless it’s in a good way), but this is important enough to me that I don’t care if I ruffle a few feathers by […]
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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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Early on, it looks like the big book is Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess, by Evan Drellich. Numerous reviews and features on the Astros’ cheating scandal include “New book on Houston’s sign-stealing scandal illuminates backstory to Cardinals hacking case” from the St. Louis Post Dispatch (paywall); “Reporter who […]
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Wondering how the new rule changes will change the rule book itself. This article from MLB.com makes them seem more complicated than I originally thought. These include: The pitch clock, which not only applies to the pitcher apparently, but the hitter as well who has to be in the batter’s box within a certain time […]
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The expression “a cup of coffee” is defined in The Dickson Baseball Dictionary (Third Edition) as “A brief trial in the major leagues by a minor league player…. The phrase seems to have derived from the observation that a young player’s first taste of the major leagues is usually quite short, figuratively just long enough […]
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I’ve done a series of entries on the things I keep: unusual books, cards, or other items that I’ve collected over the years. One of my “collectibles,” in addition to books, is baseball caps. I’ve got about 30 of them lining the wall of my office. I have this rule that I can’t just buy […]
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Getting closer (hopefully) to pitchers and catchers reporting but there’s still time to catch a good baseball movie. Or a bad one, depending on your point of view. The folks at MLB’s website are offering their choices on various themes. In this entry, they seek to answer the question, “Which baseball film has the best […]
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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
Nothing succeeds like Succession (Bill Wambsganss)
May 25, 2023
SPOILER ALERT Succession is one of the best — and annoying — TV shows around. Generally, I don’t like shows that glorify the ultra-rich. And I wonder how this is considered a “dramedy,” even though there are some very funny lines in it. My daughter, Rachel, found this Tik-Tok piece from Nameberry.com that theorizes about […]
Tagged as: Bill Wambsganss, Succession
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