Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Back from vay-cay. Reading an interesting book, The Gas and Flame Men: Baseball and the Chemical Warfare Service during World War I, by Jim Leeke. Also finished a novel — a rarity for me — The Fireballer, by Mark Stevens, on the basis of its inclusion as a finalist for Spitball Magazine‘s CASEY Award. Started […]
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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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One of the main concerns when MLB announced it would incorporate Negro League statistics into the official canon was “How?” It seemed there were a bunch of problems with that noble effort to recognize Black baseball on a more equal level with the Majors, but the lack of coverage made that difficult. The Black media […]
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♦ Roy Hobbs leads off this New York Times quiz about characters from iconic novels. If you don’t get the answer, you’re dead to me. ♦ This “Behind the Best-Seller List” piece from the Times about Joe Posnanski’s Why We Love Baseball is already online but will appear in the Oct. 1 book review section. […]
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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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My, how times have changed. When A League of Their Own came out in 1992, it did so without much reference to “coming out.” While the vastly popular film did bring much deserved yet overlooked attention to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, one of the contemporary complaints is that it did not address the […]
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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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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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As you know, I almost never include children’s books here. But in this case I’ll make an exception because it was written by former MLBer Ryan Lavarnway. The fact that it is about his experiences with Team Israel for the World Baseball Classic is a bonus, especially as we enter the High Holiday season. Frederic […]
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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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A League of Their Own premiered more than 30 years ago. Ahead of my Bookshelf Conversation with Erin Carlson, author of No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of A League of Their Own — Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood, I found several stories about the film that takes a […]
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So I have several “Google alerts” to let me know about all things baseball books. I hit the jackpot today. ♦ From The Sporting News (or at least what’s left of it now that the print edition is gone), this Q&A with Joe Posnanski on his new book, Why We Love Baseball: A History in […]
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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.az (See my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks.”) In addition, occasionally […]
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The Last Miracle: My 18-Year Journey with the Amazin’ New York Mets, by Ed Kranepool with Gary Kaschak (Triumph, 2023) I have been a fan of Ed Kranepool since I first became interested in baseball and the Mets. Can’t explain it. Maybe it was because he made his debut at the tender age of 17. […]
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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.az (See my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks.”) In addition, occasionally […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
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 Sandy Koufax in the 1965 World Series appears in
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
