Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf — If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here — Page 2

The Bookshelf Conversation #175: Josh Wilker

"Bookshelf Conversations"

A couple of weeks ago I visited a local shop that purportedly sold comics and baseball cards. Alas, I learned that was not the case. The owner told me there was no real business for cards over the past several years. I would say that that’s a shame but the reality is there have been […]

Tagged as: Baseball Cards

Read the full article →

Baseball Best-Sellers, March 8, 2024

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, […]

Read the full article →

Awards season, continued: The Jefferson Burdick Award

Since you can out baseball cards on your bookshelf… SABR’s Baseball Cards Research Committee has bestowed its highest honor — the Jefferson Burdick Award — to legendary artist Dick Perez. From the Committee’s announcement: While Dick is best known to many collectors for his fifteen-year run (1982-96) creating Donruss Diamond Kings, these cards only scratch […]

Tagged as: Dick Perez

Read the full article →

Got some spare change?

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 […]

Read the full article →

Hello, Old Friend

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 […]

Read the full article →

Baseball Best-Sellers, March 1, 2024

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 […]

Tagged as: Boston Red Sox, Pete Rose

Read the full article →

Awards season, continued: SABR’s Henry Chadwick Awards

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

Congrats to Larry Gerlach, Leslie Heaphy, and Sarah Langs, this year’s recipients of the Henry Chadwick Award given by the Society for American Baseball Research, “established to honor the game’s great researchers — historians, statisticians, annalists, and archivists — for their invaluable contributions to making baseball the game that links America’s present with its past.” […]

Read the full article →

Bits and pieces, February 27, 2024

Well, spring training is well underway. And this year, pretty much like every year, I promise myself I will keep up with every team, not just the Mets.I finally shelled out for a subscription to Baseball Prospectus, even though I consider it a bit too analytics-driven for a numbskull like me who has no interest […]

Read the full article →

Baseball Best-Sellers, February 23, 2024

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 […]

Read the full article →

Baseball Best-Sellers, February 16, 2024

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 […]

Read the full article →

Bits and Pieces, February 13, 2024

Oh, the weather outside is frightful… Funny how you never hear songs about winter after Christmas. Why is that? It’s still the season. “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” doesn’t seem to have any holiday significance. Same for “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which has certain problems but we won’t go into that now. Moving on… ♦ […]

Read the full article →

Baseball Best-Sellers, February 9, 2024

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 […]

Read the full article →

Bookshelf Review: The Body Scout

The Body Scout: A Novel, by Lincoln Michel I was going to hold off on this until I finished A Mound Over Hell, the first book in a trilogy by Gary Morgenstern, because both were about baseball in a dystopian world. But then I came across an article posted on The Athletic — “Why the […]

Tagged as: baseball fiction, Lincoln Michel

Read the full article →

National Pastime Radio: Wait, Wait… A Baseball Limerick

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 […]

Read the full article →

Baseball Best-Sellers, February 2, 2024

Happy Groundhog Day! I never understood it: if the groundhog sees its shadow, doesn’t that mean that the weather is nice and that there should not be six more weeks of winter? Meteorologists and sports pundits are the only professions where you can be wring half the time and still keep your job. Moving on… […]

Read the full article →

Award season, continued

"Bookshelf Conversations"

It should come as no surprise that this year’s CASEY Award, presented by Spitball Magazine, goes to Joe Posnanski for his latest masterpiece, Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments. It almost seems unfair that such great work should come from the same writer in such quick succession. From the press release from […]

Tagged as: Joe Posnanski, Spitball Magazine

Read the full article →

The Bookshelf Conversation #174: Jim Gilmore and Tracy Halcomb

"Bookshelf Conversations"

The things one finds wandering down the rabbit hole. I was doing some research and just happened to come across the new film, Fielding Dreams: A Celebration of Baseball Scouts. It’s a fascinating look at an under-reported part of the game. The first thing I thought of was the scene in Moneyball in which Billy […]

Read the full article →

Baseball Best-Sellers, January 26, 2024

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 […]

Read the full article →

Say it ain’t so, SI

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

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 […]

Tagged as: Sports Illustrated

Read the full article →

Baseball Best-Sellers, January 19, 2024

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 […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →

script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-5496371-4']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();