Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine recently announced that The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball, written by John W. Miller is the winner of the 2025 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year. Play Harder: The Triumph of Black Baseball in America by Gerald Early finished close behind followed […]
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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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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 […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
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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Going old school here. For some reason, despite my best efforts, the video did not come out in not one, but two attempts. No biggie. Prior to the pandemic, I used to do these Conversations by phone, so let us return to yesteryear… My baseball card collecting days only go back to the mid-1960s. But […]
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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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♦ With the latest scandal, I wonder if books about the Black Sox will get a bump in readership? To catch up, here’s a piece from The Atlantic: “Baseball’s Big Whiff on Gambling.” ♦ Journalist Terry Moran posted this piece on “The Storyteller: Joe Posnanski on what sports tells us about love, loss and belonging” […]
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Now that the season is over, it’s time to look ahead to see what reading material will carry us over to “pitchers and catchers.” As with previous lists like this, I have omitted anything that falls into the general category of “romance novels.” Also, no books about trivia or designed for younger readers. In last […]
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As predicted, we have our first book commemorating the 2026 World Series: The book is published by USA Today. More info here. In addition, the Los Angeles Times just released Dynasty: The Dodgers’ Journey to Back-to-Back World Series Titles. And from the Los Angeles Daily News, we have Out of This World: How the Los Angeles […]
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NOTE: By the time you read this, the World Series might be over. If that’s the case, I wonder how quickly a book about the winner will take to publish. I am willing to bet cash money that such a book will be on the BBS next week. ***** A reminder: The Amazon rankings are […]
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With the Fall Classic set to begin tonight, here’s an interesting piece from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on “15 books about baseball to celebrate the Blue Jays in the World Series.” To be clear, these are not all about the Jays, but I have to admit I had never heard of most of these titles, […]
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♦ Depending on when you read this, and where you live, your can still take advantage of this: On Monday, October 6, at 5 pm, the New York State Museum in Albany will present John Thorn, the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, for a special evening presentation on baseball’s deep connection with New York […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In a former life, I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted an award-winning bog about Jews and Sports.
I did a profile piece on the legendary cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was very generous in immortalizing me in this caricature.
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
The Bookshelf Conversation #200: Jane Leavy
October 13, 2025
I don’t know when it started or ended but Topps used to reserve cards ending in double-00 for the superstars of the game. Mays, Mantle, Koufax, Carew, Seaver, and Reggie have all appeared multiple times. So I felt it only appropriate to follow their lead and save the 200th Bookshelf Conversation for one of my […]
Tagged as: Jane Leavy
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