Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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I was waiting for this: now you can access facsimile of many older issue issues of SI via the publication’s “vault.” All you have to do is select the issue and click on the “view this issue” link. Then you can “turn” virtual pages. Sure beat the old way SI Vauly handled things, with just [...]
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Congratulations to the Houston Astros, now proudly atop the AL West. Shows what all the baseball pundits know. That’s what the preview issues are all about: picking who will finish where, which team will win it all, who will be the big award winners come the end of the season. The two primary publications, to [...]
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Sports Illustrated recently came out with a list of their choices for the 100 greatest sports photos of all time. Baseball Nation’s Grant Brisbee was ambitious enough to cull the baseball shots which includes, as ranked: 99. Willie Mays, “The Catch” 94. Greg Olsen, “Ow, my head and neck!” 89. Juan Marichal, “Windup” 83. Yogi [...]
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(Kids, ask your parents/grandparents.) One of my pre-season amusements is to purchase baseball magazines and study their predictions, especially for who will get to the post-season. Somewhere on my other blog is an analysis of how they’ve done in seasons past. This year PunditTracker has done the work for me. The San Francisco Giants get [...]
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Another sports magazine show? Well, when you carry the SI imprimatur, people will pay attention. The monthly offering premieres tonight on the NBC Sports Network. One of the four segments: The Bundy Project: The development of prized Baltimore Orioles pitching prospect Dylan Bundy is quite extraordinary. He squats 500 lbs. throws a 100-mph fastball, drinks [...]
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S.L. Price gives Texas Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton the star treatment with an in-depth profile. Cross your fingers that no ill befalls the outfielder, as was the case for Matt Kemp a few weeks ago. Price was the guest on a recent Inside Sports Illustrated podcast to talk about the background of his story (the [...]
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♦ Albert Chen wrote this Matt Kemp feature. ♦ Joe Sheehan’s stat corner: players whose HR/Fly Ball ratio are pretty impressive. ♦ Sheehan on the surprising Baltimore Orioles.
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[Note: My spring baseball roundup appears on Bookreporter.com and is reposted here as individual reviews for your convenience.] Former Sports Illustrated executive editor Rob Fleder assembled his own literary All-Star team for Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team. The roster includes such “players” as Roy Blount Jr., [...]
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Ben Reiter wrote this piece on the newest hot team in baseball, the Washington Nationals, while Tom Verducci provides this on Phil Humber’s perfect game.
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The Miami Marlins, apparently. This Forbes piece calls the franchise “The Most Overexposed Team in Sports,” citing recent feature stories in Time magazine, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times, not to mention the Marlins’ gig as the focus of the new season of HBO’s The Franchise. (It was the Time piece [...]
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The annual baseball preview issues are here. We look forward to these every years, especially with the dearth of “real baseball” (as opposed to fantasy) magazines available this year. Before the days of the Internet, you took what you could get and appreciated it, even if the information was “old” by the time you read [...]
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One of the legends of the sportswriting world passed away yesterday at the age of 93. Bisher began writing for the Atlanta Journal Constitution in 1950, retiring in 2009. he began his newspaper career in 1938 at the Lumberton Voice in North Carolina. I recall him from his work as a region writer covering the [...]
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David Epstein published this article on “How Lenny Dykstra Got Nailed.” The writer elaborates on the story on the “Inside Sports Illustrated Podcast.” Last week the cover story was “Marlinsanity.” Cute. Very original.
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First it was regular interleague play. Then the Brewers switched leagues. Now the Astros will move to the AL (why couldn’t they have just left the Brewers alone?) But now, Sports Illustrated‘s Tom Verducci asks “Is the designated hitter coming to a National League park near you?” I get it. They’re trying to pump up the [...]
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Kostya Kennedy, author of 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports, has been selected as winner of the are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2012 CASEY Award, the annual prize of Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine. According to a press release issued by Spitball editor Mike Shannon, 56 received two [...]
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This is the year-end issue, so it’s not that strange to find a baseball item. In this case, it’s Lee Jenkins’ excellent recap of “Best. Night. Ever.” which tells the stories of those amazing games on Sept. 28 that saw the Rays win in their last at-bat to win a playoff spot, the Red Sox [...]
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Found of a couple of interesting items at the local B&N. The first was USA Today‘s annual sports yearbook (sorry, couldn’t find a picture of the cover on-line). It has all the usual info: lots of stats and standings, capsule news roundups, photos, etc. It carries a cover price of $7.99. My main bugaboo was [...]
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is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.
In my "day job," I'm the features and sports editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper. I'm also the editor of the Bibliography Committee Newsletter for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
I did a piece on the award-winning cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
Congratulations to Charles P. of Long Island City, NY, winner of the most recent Facebook Fan drawing, The Might Have Been: A Novel
Next up: Long Shot
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My article on the later biographies of Babe Ruth appears in
My article on the Mets' 1969 post-season appears in
What I just read:
Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race
Well-intentioned, but somewhat disappointing in delivery of the intended message. B-.
What I'm reading now
Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age
First Impressions: Too soon to tell.
What I'm RE-reading now
Play for a Kingdom
What's next:
Gil Hodges: The Brooklyn Bums, the Miracle Mets, and the Extraordinary Life of a Baseball Legend
Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game
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Bits and pieces
July 10, 2012 · 0 comments
* John Rocker‘s memoir is not exactly new but it’s still getting some buzz. Whether or not it’s good is besides the point. I think a lot of people want to know if he’s as big a train wreck as he came off in that Sports Illustrated piece in 1999. * Dennis Anderson sent me [...]
Tagged as: John Rocker, Sports Illustrated
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