Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know I have an aversion to hyperbole. Words like “greatest” or “best” or “ever” or “forever” have always raised a red flag for me because the majority of the time, they’re not. It may be unfair because I haven’t read this one save […]
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Graham Womack published this ranked list of the 25 greatest baseball books on The Sporting News site. When I wrote 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die, I made a decision not to put them in an order other than alphabetical to avoid having to defend my choices. Such a method invites arguments […]
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Honored to be the “closer” for The National Pastime Museum’s series on “The Baseball Book That Changed My Life” with an essay on The Tao of Baseball. Following up on what I wrote last week, it’s flattering to be in a lineup with such a great group of folks who discussed their most influential baseball […]
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In a sense, this is the book that launched more than a thousand books, the first in what became an obsession. This Great Game, published in 1971 by Routledge Press under the imprimatur of Major League Baseball, was an anthology, a of marvelous collection of photos and illustrations and narratives from some of the great […]
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Since I posted the first of these on a Thursday, which is known on social media as a time of reflection, I thought to make it a regular thing under this rubric. These are kind of fun; it’s like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get. (Actually, I never understood […]
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Earlier this year I posted an entry about the relative intelligence of baseball fans when it comes to proper use of grammar, based on a report by Grammarly.com. According to the piece, Mets fans were the worst, with an average of 13.9 mistakes per 100 words; those who called the Cleveland Indians their own were […]
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W2W4 is shortspeak for “what to watch for.” This can refer to movies, TV, or just about any pop culture event coming in the future. After reading this piece by actor/writer Ian Michael Black in the Nov. 22 NY Times Sunday Book Review I got to thinking about how we listen to what used to […]
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Since I posted the first of these on a Thursday, which is known on social media as a time of reflection, I thought to make it a regular thing under this rubric. These are kind of fun; it’s like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get. (Actually, I never understood […]
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Look, I’m no one to complain. I’ve had my share of shameless self-promoting. But come on, when Will Ferrell pulled off his spring training stunt of playing 10 positions for 10 teams in one day, you had to know that something was up. Sure, this gig ostensibly raised money for caner awareness. But it also […]
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Found this on Facebook this morning via Marc Ernay, sports director at 1010 WINS: In the words of my good friend, Howard Walawitz: What kind of market study did the knobs at MLB.com do to determine that this was cutting edge, that this is what it takes to retain the interest of younger fans? If […]
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But I’ve often felt that a fair number of these “literary” book reviews were semi-incestuous. That is, the authors travel in a lot of the same circles, went to the same schools, know the same people. It frequently struck me as a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” quid pro quo kind of thing. […]
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Since I posted the first of these on a Thursday, which is known on social media as a time of reflection, I thought to make it a regular thing under this rubric. As a reminder, I highly recommend Pocket as a way to hold onto links you come that you want to keep. Unlike bookmarks, […]
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Okay, it’s not actually advertising, but The Player’s Tribune, an on-line “magazine’ founded by the recently-retired Derek Jeter, has come under some scrutiny lately. TPT purports to “publish first-person stories directly from the athletes” (emphasis added). Maybe there’s a difference of opinion on the definition of “directly.” Richard Sandomir, the New York Times’ sports media […]
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Because, let’s face it, its worth will be questionable. One of the things I loved about the old Street & Smith baseball annuals was the list of upcoming milestones that were within reach for current ballplayers. You could see, for example, that this guy was 22 home runs away from 500, or that guy was […]
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Because you can put a stopwatch on your bookshelf. The regular season was over but the post-season hadn’t started yet. What to do? I know! Let’s talk about how to speed up the games. That’s appropriate right before you air even longer games, thanks to team introductions (including the trainers) and more elaborate “honoring America” […]
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Every now and then I get a bit antsy about the state of 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. I check the Amazon rankings more than I should and am (relatively) happy when it rises, sad when it falls. Fluctuations are constant. It’s been as high as 9,005 and as low as […]
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If you can remember the old Saturday Night Live skit — a take-off on 60 Minutes‘ “Point/Counterpoint” segment between conservative James J. Kilptarick and Shana Shana Alexander representing the liberal POV — you might be old enough to get where Boston Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan is coming from when he asks “Do baseball fans […]
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Wayne Coffey, sports columnist for the New York Daily News, wrote this piece about Mariano Rivera, for whom he served as coauthor for the future Hall of Famer’s memoir, The Closer. I’ve been a big admirer of Coffey’s work both as a journalist and author; he was quite generous with his time for a Bookshelf […]
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Lou Gehrig. Jackie Robinson. Two of the game’s most iconic players, celebrated for their courage under extreme conditions. Both the subjects of outstanding biographies by Jonathan Eig, and both of which appear in 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die Eig has worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Chicago magazine, […]
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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
My (fantasy) Q&A with Sandy Koufax
January 28, 2018
“Who would be your fantasy interview?” I think I speak for a lot of Jewish fans when I say it would be Sandy Koufax. These are some of the questions I would ask, assuming he was bound to answer honestly and not just sit there sipping his wine. What was really behind the decision not […]
Tagged as: Sandy Koufax
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