Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
My stats-keepers indicates The Bookshelf has received more than a quarter million hits. My thanks to all you readers out there. I know there are thousands of baseball blogs and believe The Bookshelf is one of the few devoted to this particular niche. But I’m just curious as to your take on the best of […]
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For some bizarre reason, I’ve always been fascinated by the game of cricket and would love to find a place to play. Herewith a story about whether Americans will ever embrace the baseball-ish sport from the BBC.
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Was anyone else bothered by this story on Johnny Damon in today’s New York Times? Damon, one of the heroes of the 2009 World Series, is currently unemployed. A free agent, the Yankees have displayed little interest in resigning him and at the moment, there are no other takers as teams have filled their high-profile […]
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From Len Berman’s That’s Sports site: Having worked in the news business, I’ve seen how it works. A big story breaks. It gets covered, and then the media moves on. Haiti doesn’t and shouldn’t work that way. Word comes that at least 30 members of Haiti’s soccer federation, players, refs, coaches and other officials, perished […]
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So many calendars, so little time. (Hmm.) Picked up a day-by-day calendar for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum for the new year. I usually have a problem keeping up with the task of tearing off that one page, but with this one, it’s all I can do to keep from sneaking a […]
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The current issue of ESPN the Magazine includes a cute feature titled “Over the Top,” by Amanda Angel. The Greatest Story Ever Told is about Jesus himself, but these days you’d half-expect to find that title on a bookseller’s spoets shelves. A quick glance at the genre shows many true, real and seemingly impossible epic […]
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My wife recently bought The Complete Rinner’s Day-By-Day 2010 Calendar which included this philosophical tidbit:
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See how well you can do on this Mental Floss quiz about the 1988 film version of Eliot Asinof’s classic about the 1919 Black Sox. I had a perfect score; I’m just sayin’.
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In this insightful piece from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, David Biderman takes a look at new trends in ballpark food. Not the kind for you and me — we can go to nutritional hell — but for the players. Rather than unhealthy and heavy fried foods, players now have healthier options: fruits, low-sugar snacks, etc. […]
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Twenty years ago, next January 31, The National Sports Daily made its debut. In the pre-Internet days, the mission statement of this publication was to provide readers with as much information as quickly and well-written as possible, taking a swipe at the weekly Sporting News (less so Sports Illustrated). Those lending their name to the […]
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My apologies to those who missed me. I was away, doing my best impersonation of George Plimpton, as an embed at Yankees Fantasy Camp, an experience I will be blogging about here in the near future. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Fantasy Camp offers regular Joes the opportunity to be little boys again — […]
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Just arrived at the Tampa Bay Sheraton Suites, where I will spend the next week as an embedded journalist at Yankee Fantasy Camp, specifically writing about the new Kosher component. Ran into an old “colleague,” Bryan Hoch, who covers the Yankees for MLB.com. I met Bryan years ago when he was a 19-year-old covering the […]
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Unless it’s the one in the Nov. 16 issue of New York magazine, which features a theme of “Baseball Hall-of-Fame Anagrams.” Sorry, but it doesn’t appear to be on their website.
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Kudos for the Star-Ledger and their sidebar for separating World Series records from the rest of the post-season pack. Derek Jeter now has 50 hits in the World Series, which moves him into fifth place. Andy Pettitte has five wins, good for forth place with a bunch of others. I bring this up because there […]
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“But the most amazing thing of all: I get paid for doing this” (the closing lines for one of the comedian’s songs during his heyday in the late 1970s). I bring it up because, once again, it goes to the folly of using sports pundits as a source of reliable information. At least when it […]
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Sorry I’ve been away and neglectful. I’m a bit excited about going to Yankees Fantasy Camp in November. I’ll be writing about the experience for my other blog as well as the NJ Jewish News and a few other outlets because of the new kosher component, which offers kosher food and special programming for Jewish […]
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Depending on which stat counter I consult, I reached 200,000 visitors awhile back, but since the one on the sidebar just made it “official” I wanted to says “thanks” to old friends and new for exceeding my wildest expectations.
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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 only time Mark McGwire will be connected with National Public Radio
January 20, 2010
Our favorite game show host, Peter Sagal, included the recent shocking news about Mark McGwire on the latest episode of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. In the “Who’s Carl This Time” feature, sidekick Carl Kassel offered the quote: “I used very very low dosages. There was no way I wanted to look like Lou Ferrigno […]
Tagged as: Mark McGwire, NPR, Peter Sagal
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