Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
You don’t have to be a SABR member to enjoy The Emerald Guide to Baseball 2014. That is, if you’re willing to access the 600-plus page PDF version. Otherwise you’ll have to pay for the printed edition, which comes out around opening day. According to the page at the SABR site, The 2014 edition of […]
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One of my favorite features in the old Street & Smith annuals was the list of statistical targets (The Sporting News now has that burden/honor). The contemporary players were listed along with the all-timers for major categories such as home runs, RBI, wins, strikeouts, etc. But many of those milestones don’t seem like that much […]
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Baseball Reflections posted this review of High Fives, Pennant Drives, and Fernandomania: A Fan’s History of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Glory Years (1977-1981), by Paul Haddad. Just in time for Opening Day in Japan (which just passed. Sorry for the late post): baseball terms in Japanese! Another late post: GQ ran this profile on broadcasting […]
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I contributed a couple of pieces to Mental Floss (including the July-Aug. 2002 cover story for “The Spy Issue”) when they were just knee-high to more established magazines. So I have a soft spot for the publication even if they don’t answer my calls anymore (sniff, sniff). They’ve greatly expanded and now offer a bunch […]
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The semi-regular roundup of things I neglected to post previously. From DriveLineBaseball, this review of The Physics of Pitching: Learn the Mechanics, Science, and Psychology of Pitching to Success. Upshot: It “falls well short of [Robert K.} Adair’s classic text [The Physics of Baseball]. Sure, it looks a lot cooler (the photography is top notch), […]
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One of my favorite sections of the then-Street and Smith,/now-Sporting News annuals is the part devote to player milestone/targets. It remains great fun to see where the contemporary stars rank in relation to the legends of the game. I enjoy looking at a player and counting down, and guessing if he’ll make the goal during […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Jan. 14, 1:37 p.m. Title Rank General The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 1 Baseball Prospectus 2011 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 3 Baseball Forecaster 2011, by Ron Shandler 4 […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com, as of Friday, Dec. 17 at 1 p.m. Title Rank General The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 2 Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh […]
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Craig Biggio, the last player to join the 3,000-hit club, turns 45 today. The book on him: Biggio: The Final Game. Honorary mention: Scott Hatteberg. Who’s he, you ask? Basically, Hatteberg — who walked 562 and struck out just 503 times and had a .361 OBP over his 14-year career — was one of the […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, July 16. Title Rank General Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball, by Bill Madden 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 2 The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by Scott Turbow […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, July 2. Title Rank General Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 1 Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball, by Bill Madden 2 The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by Scott Turbow […]
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When Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record in 1974, Ernie Harwell and Bill Slayback collaborated on “Move over Babe, Here Comes Henry,” a musical tribute. Wonder if some tunesmith will do the same now that Jamie Moyer has “bested” Robin Roberts on the all-time home runs allowed list? Like the pundits say, […]
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Weathermen and sports pundits. I’ve always said these are the top two professions where you can be wrong in your predictions a good part of the time and still keep your job. Saw this piece on the “dwindlization” of milestones on The Wall Street Journal site by Matthew Futterman in which he writes: “…this venerable […]
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The Baseball Timeline, by Burt Solomon (Dorling Kindersley Publishing). The Chronicle of Baseball: A Century of Major League Action, by John Mehno (Carlton Books). A Stitch in Time: A Baseball Chronology, 1845-2000. by Gene Elston (Halcyon Press). Day-by-Day in Baseball History, by Carl R. Moesche (McFarland). Baseball Extra: A Newspaper History of the Glorious Game […]
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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 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
