Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
A couple of days ago I posted an entry about some unique baseball books. Since then I’ve exchanged a few e-mails with Erin Zamrzla, creator of these unique mini-notebooks. I asked how she chose the three relatively obscure players — Sibby Sisti, Andy Seminick, and Don Kolloway — for her project. “I ended up using […]
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This enterprising entrepreneur combines baseball cards with plank pages to create a new kind of baseball book. There are three versions, one for Andy Seminick, one for Don Kolloway, and the third for Sibby Sisti. Why these guys? I’ll ask the artist, “erinzam,” from San Diego. Maybe they just had a bunch of these particular […]
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One of my favorite off-beat baseball sites is Craig Robinson’s Flip Flop Flyball. (I wrote about Robinson and his work awhile back.) Rather than the usual staid numbers, Robinson — a graphic artist originally from Great Britain — takes unusual items and turns them into colorful graphic representations. Among the topics he’s considered on the […]
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The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will host the Baseball Film Festival in Cooperstown, Oct. 1-3. As part of the three-day event, Billy Crystal, who directed and executive produced the classic film 61*, will be on hand as the Hall of Fame celebrates his 2001 production that told the story of the 1961 […]
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I first “discovered” Dick Perez many years ago via his “Diamond King” baseball cards inserted into the Donruss sets. Little did I realize that that was just the tip of the iceberg. Perez, a former “official artist” for the Baseball Hall of Fame, has just released The Immortals, a massive, gorgeous collection of his work […]
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On Saturday July 3 from 12 – 4:00 p.m., come celebrate America’s favorite pastime and the art of Norman Rockwell. Meet Linda Ruth Tosetti, Babe Ruth’s granddaughter; learn about the Major Leagues from Brian Daubach, former Red Sox first baseman; explore the art of baseball with illustrator Graig Kreindler; take a lively look at the […]
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by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (2003; Picador Translation 2009) I can’t even remember where I heard of this title but I’m glad I did. Ogawa tells a touching story about a Japanese housekeeper, her 10-year-old son, and her professional charge, a former mathematics professor with an unusual disability, which was the result of […]
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As longs as it touches, it fits. When I was a kid, the big thing were 3′ x 6′ posters. They came in a tube and were a real bear to flatten out enough to tape to your wall (this was in the cro-magnon days before poster tack and double-stick tape were invented). These were […]
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Of course, in my case, it’s more a math thing than science.
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Come on, you know you do it. Everybody does it… The first time I “discovered” myself was in an airport in Milwaukee, coming back, appropriately enough, from a SABR convention. In the time since, when I’ve Googled myself to see where mention of The Bookshelf might have appeared. I’ve discovered I share the name with […]
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, December 4. Title Rank General Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress (565) 1 The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci (731) 2 The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of […]
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Very cool animation. Form VeryShortList.com: There’s been a lot of hand-wringing about baseball and the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but consider this: In 1970, one major leaguer threw a no-hitter while high on acid and Benzedrine. Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No is the hilarious animated short that tells this truly incredible tale. Featuring narration […]
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Found this a few weeks ago, but had forgotten about it. A great new book — Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera — tells the backstories about many of his famous paintings, including his 1948 work, “The Dugout,” which depicts a desolate Cubs team languishing in poor times. NPR picks up the story here, with the […]
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, October 2. Title Rank General The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski 1 Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher & a Hall of […]
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Thanks to the NY Times’ Freakonomics blog, I came across FlipFlopFlyball, an off-shoot of flipflopflyin.com, which offers some unusual charts regarding the national pastime. In one, we see just how many Native Americans actually live in Cleveland (which gave me a few ideas for future charts)*, an unusual representation of when teams broke the color line, […]
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May seems to be arts month across the country, and it should be no surprise that baseball would be well represented. *** George Krevsky Gallery’s (77 Geary Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco) presents its 12th annual baseball exhibition featuring artists from across the country capturing America’s national pastime in paintings, drawings, photography, and sculpture. The […]
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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
