Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
So after the year I’ve had, I decided to bite the bullet and venture down to SABR 50, the annual convention that should have been held in 2020 but, well, you know… I have to say, it wasn’t without a bit of trepidation. Driving was out of the question so Amtrak it was. I love […]
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There is little that I can offer that would be as eloquent as what others have said and written about the legendary broadcaster who passed away Tuesday at the age of 94. From what I know, Scully was a modest person and a real mensch. He declined to tell his own story and was almost […]
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When my daughter decided she wanted to go into photography as a career, I was worried. Since everyone who has a smartphone is a photographer now, how are you going to make any money off that? But not everyone who has the ability to use a camera phone has the talent to make their shots […]
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He blinded me with science! Never a strong suit of mine in school, and normally I would stay away from any book that would remind me of that failing, but Will Carroll‘s latest book does have baseball in the title so… Carroll has long been the go-to guy for all things injury-related (his Twitter handle […]
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Somewhere in the attic, among all the boxes of baseball material, are a stack of scorecards and programs I’ve used over the years. The first one was from a Mets-Pirates game in 1966. It has the unsophisticated scrawls you’d expect from a nine-year-old who hadn’t yet learned the “right way” to record what was going […]
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I am always excited to see a new book come out on Jewish baseball. It was a main part of my job as sports editor of the New Jersey Jewish News to seek out anything to refute the canard that “members of the tribe” are bookish and unathletic. So imagine my delight when I learned of […]
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Hard to believe it’s been 75 years since Jackie Robinson’s debut. I sometimes think about the veterans of World War II and how old they have to be to have served back in the early 1940s; Robinson would have been 102 this year. Where does the time go? There have probably been more books written […]
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Congratulations to Joe Posnanski, whose latest release, The Baseball 100, was recently selected by Spitball Magazine for the 39th annual Casey Award, emblematic of best baseball book of the year. In a press release, Spitball described The Baseball 100 as “a ranking of the best players in baseball history with brilliant essays devoted to each […]
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The long-time sportswriter and the first author to focus on a single-game analysis passed away Sunday at the ripe old age of 99. I had interviewed Arnold Hano back in 2012 to discuss A Day in the Bleachers, a classic about the 1954 World Series between the New York Giants and Cleveland Indians. It would […]
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There’s a first time for everything. For example, this is the first time we’ve had a poet on for a Conversation. It’s the same reasoning I have for not doing much fiction on the blog: I just don’t feel qualified to address the genre. My experience with poetry is limited to doggerel like “Casey at […]
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Headnote: One of the thing I like about the Pandemic Baseball Book Club is that it’s a kind of “one stop shopping.” Instead of posting about various authors, projects, and events, all I’m doing here is cutting and pasting their weekly newsletter. Do take a moment to read the author Q&A. I find them particularly interesting as […]
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I had hoped by now the whole nasty Covid business would be behind us. I was wrong. If there’s anything good that’s come out of this for baseball readers, it’s the Pandemic Baseball Book Club. The PBBC has given a platform to authors who missed out on the opportunities a normal year would have offered […]
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Headnote: One of the thing I like about the Pandemic Baseball Book Club is that it’s a kind of “one stop shopping.” Instead of posting about various authors, projects, and events, all I’m doing here is cutting and pasting their weekly newsletter. Do take a moment to read the author Q&A. I find them particularly interesting as […]
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New: An asterisk serves to let you know that the author is a member of the Pandemic Baseball Book Club. I enthusiastically recommend you visit the site, sign up for their newsletter, and buy some merch. A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by […]
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Headnote: One of the thing I like about the Pandemic Baseball Book Club is that it’s a kind of “one stop shopping.” Instead of posting about various authors, projects, and events, all I’m doing here is cutting and pasting their weekly newsletter. Do take a moment to read the author Q&A. I find them particularly interesting as […]
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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
