Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
From “My Grandma’s of New England“ Pure Dark chocolate morsels are sprinkled, along with fresh walnuts, throughout the middle and atop this already luscious rich and moist chocolate batter. This cake was tasted by Hall of Famer Ted Williams, the greatest hitter in the history of baseball, and deemed worthy enough to be named “The […]
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From umpbump.com: Baseball book club alert: Manny Ramirez has been reading (and even underlining passages of) The Secret, the best-selling New Age book by Rhonda Byrnes (via The Joy of Sox) as part of the left fielder’s new, Mannytating lifestyle. And according to Call of the Green Monster, Jonathan Papelbon picked up To Kill A […]
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From Men’s Vogue, this review of Ballet in the Dirt, the pricey photography book by Neil Leifer. Another Leifer feature appeared in the Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post ran this review on the new biography on Bernard Malamud, author of The Natural, generally considered the first “adult” baseball fiction. Itsaboutthemoney, a blog “celebrating the […]
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but did anyone notice that the co-author of Game of Shadows, the book that blew the cover off of Barry Bonds and the whole steroids scandal, is named Mark Fainaru-Wada. That’s WADA, as in World Anti-Doping Agency. Coincidence? Or destiny? Hmmm.
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Seattle’s Soothing Baseball Voice Headed to Cooperstown – If you’re lucky, your team’s baseball games are broadcast by an announcer like Dave Niehaus, voice of the Seattle Mariners since they first took the field 31 years ago. Neihuas was recently named recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Caple […]
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Poor Derek. Has to juggle all those daunting tax issues. That’s why you pay an accountant!
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The former general manager of the Cincinnati Reds of the Big Red Machine era, died at the age of 89. Howsam was also GM for the St. Louis Cardinals, from 1964-66, right before the team won back-to-back pennants.
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What next, sponsorship by Chico’s Bail Bonds? It’s bad enough there are so many variables — three tops, three bottoms, warm-up shirts, etc., not to mention all the different hats… Marc Okkonen published a colorful history (left), which chronicles the changes — subtle and not so — for all the franchises during the 20th century. […]
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Lots of “Bits and Pieces” With little beside the steroids business going on during this off-season, there’s lots of time to read and many bloggers are posting reviews, including. Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game is Wrong, Cobb: A Biography, and Is This a Great Game or What, all from […]
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The author and SABR member died Jan. 2 at age 52. According to an obituary in the Boston Globe: Mr. Thompson contributed nearly two dozen articles over the years to the organization’s research publications. In 2005, he published his first book, “The Ferrell Brothers of Baseball,” a biography of the Ferrell family of North Carolina, […]
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Each year, usually on the Sunday before Opening Day, many major market newspapers publish a baseball supplement. This can range from a few pages within the sports pages or a stand-alone section. In an attempt to analyze the kind of jobs these papers do, I’d appreciate anyone willing to do so to mail these items […]
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Long-time baseball executive John McHale passed away recently. Furman Bishop recalled his old friend in this column from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. McHale, who played a few seasons for the Detroit Tigers in the 1940s, was also a driving force for the Montreal Expos, and is remembered in this piece by that city’s Gazette.
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Not for nothing, but I think we can eliminate the adjective “record” when describing how baseball salaries increase every year. Baseball’s average salary rose 4.6 percent last year to a record (emphasis added) $2.82 million, and the New York Yankees set a high for teams at $7.47 million. Like they’re ever going to go down? […]
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Since we’re heading into awards season, this seemed appropriate:The Gummies, picking the best and worst baseball card-related items of the year. Unfortunately, there’s no explanation for the picks, nor a list of the other nominees that were in the running.
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A sad reminder of a man cut down in the prime of life, the only major leaguer to die as a result of an injury sustained on the field. Chapman was hit in the head by submariner Carl Mays on August 16, 1920. His story was chronicled in The Pitch That Killed, written in 1989 […]
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Larry Whiteside, one of the first African-American beat wrietrs to cover a team on a daily basis, died Jan. 11. at the age of 69. He had been a member of the Boston Globe staff since 1973 and wrote for papers in Kansas City and Milwaukee as well. Whiteside was posthumously elected the 2008 winner […]
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Matt Bishoff, Darysbay.com (A Tampa Bay Rays blog): What is your favorite baseball-related book and who is your favorite baseball writer? Jim Callis: Just one baseball book? That’s tough! I’m going to have to throw out a few, and I’m sure I’m missing some obvious ones. My favorites would include the Bill James Baseball Abstracts, […]
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Gerald Astor, 81, Writer on Americans in Combat, Dies “After his wartime service, he received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. He was the picture editor of Sports Illustrated in its early years and worked as an editor for Sport magazine, Look, The Saturday Evening Post and Time….Mr. Astor edited The Baseball Hall of Fame 50th […]
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At the end of each year, many magazines, newspapers, and TV shows devote some space/time to celebrities who passed away during the previous 12 months. Sad to say, I’m at the age where the incidence of those baseball figures I recall from my youth are heading for that great dugout in the sky. Among those […]
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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 blog 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
