Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Found this dumb-as-door-knob video featuring Johnny Bench on something called The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour (featuring Nick Lachay and Jessica Simpson) the through Sports Nation: You may recall the movie That Thing You Do in which The Wonders appear on an ersatz Ed Sullivan-type show, a la the Beatles. Prior to their “introduction to […]
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We have reached the time of the year where everyone (players, managers, sports media, fans) grouse about the All-Star game. Primarily it’s because their favorite player was snubbed, or that some standout veteran on his way to retirement should get one last hurrah on the national stage. The debates are (seemingly) endless. Just to point […]
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Two years ago it was Derek Jeter, who won an Academy Award for best fake hit by pitch. Now it’s Dewayne Wise, who got way too much benefit of the doubt when the umpire credited him with catching a ball in foul territory that the Yankees outfielder did not catch. Pardon the Interruption featured the […]
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Actually, it should be “My night in the Excelsior section.” As per a previous entry, I experienced the Friday Mets-Yankees game at CitiField in a different way, trying to take it in fresh from reading Arnold Hano’s classic title. In the margins of my Mets program (still a bargain at $5, by the way), I […]
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I was doing one of my regular searches to see what’s coming down the pike vis-a-vis baseball titles. One thing that stood out because the covers were very similar was a number of books that look like this. — The artwork looks like it comes right out of a generic stock photo site. The publishers […]
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Because you could put a copy of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle on a bookshelf. Evan Longoria is rehabbing with the Durham Bulls who were playing locally recently. Seems Longoria, who is trying to come back from hamstring issues, wasn’t very accommodating to writer Jim Mendalero, who took him to task in this piece. Among […]
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Lots of things you could put on a bookshelf here. Baseball Nation’s Grant Brisbee has some suggestions for what to get the baseball-loving dad this year. Somehow I don’t the the catalog descriptions are taken from the source, MLB.com.
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♦ James Bailey takes a look at Marietta College Baseball: The Story of the ‘Etta Express in this review. ♦ I did an interview with Paul Staudohar last week, the results of which will be posted as a podcast in the near future, While Googling around for some info on him (among other things, he’s […]
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Here’s something you don’t see every day. Or ever. Are you paying attention, Zack Hample?
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This screen cap comes from the trailer for Revolution, a new NBC science fiction program coming this fall. The show is set 15 years into the future, when electrical power has disappeared all over the planet. With the Cubs’ luck, they were probably leading in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World […]
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Shyam Das, the arbitrator who voted to overturn MLB’s suspension of Ryan Braun for allegedly violating its drug policy, has been fired. This was the only instance in which the MLB’s ruling was overturned. They were “outraged” at the time, when Das ruled that there were questions about the “chain of custody” of Braun’s urine […]
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This used to be me when I was a kid: I would constantly pester my friends to walk over the the ballpark when steel gray clouds were a portent for the end of e world. My attitude has changed. I play in a 50-and-over league now. I used to be on a “regular” team in […]
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I’m not the most tech-savvy blogger in the world, so you’ll pardon the interruption from the usual routine. I’ve received some comments that there are too many entries popping up in your mailboxes. I have adjusted the settings (at least I think I have) so rather than getting an email for each individual post, you’ll […]
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Not that I attended the school, mind you, but I did go there a couple of times while visiting Boston. I wish the guys on my baseball team at Brooklyn College made the long trips this inventive and interesting. But then, that’s why these guys are in Harvard and not BC.
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You can’t really put it on a bookshelf, but if there’s a real estate brochure… The suburban Boston home where Babe Ruth lived after he had been traded to the New York Yankees is for sale. Asking price: $1.65 million. According to the story on ESPN.com, the estate, known as Home Plate Farm in Sudbury, […]
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but not for very long: Chocolate-covered strawberries. Yum.
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No, the player born William Joseph Skowron was not Jewish, but there is a Jewish connection, no matter how tenuous. Skowron, a resident of Chicago, was a guest on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, the NPR news quiz show hosted by landsman Peter Sagal. Long story short, Skowron said some things that sounded so detailed […]
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Matt Kemp has had a wonderful start: Six home runs in the Dodgers’ first 10 games, as well as 16 RBIs, and a BA/OBP/SLG line of .487/.523/1.026. But someone has to be a bit more ambitious, or at least less lazy. ESPN projects a player’s end-of-season/162 game stats based purely on what he has […]
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Because you can keep a TV on a bookshelf: Although I actually prefer the shorter version: Love the eye-roll when the Cubs’ fan refers to the “elegantly-coiffed ex-governor.”
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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
Bits and pieces
July 10, 2012
* 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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