Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Hurdle•isms: Wit and Wisdom from a Lifetime in Baseball, by Clint Hurdle Ever notice how the pairing is always “wit and wisdom,” never “sadness and wisdom”? Hmmm. This is going to be a short one. Instead of the play on the author’s name, another appropriate title could have been Plat-titudes for baseball, any sport, or […]
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Bill James has left the building. I remember picking up the first edition of his Baseball Abstract when it first became commercially available in the late 1980s. Since then, his work has become synonymous with clever analysis, as opposed to just a collection of numbers one could find in various encyclopedias. The Walk-Off Edition, the […]
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Games are shorter by a good chunk, thanks to the speed-up rules now in place. MLB thinks that’s a good thing, but who are they trying to convince? “Real” baseball fans, IMO, don’t care about the length of the games. The longer the better (unless the weather is crappy). That’s what separates baseball from other […]
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I was looking back over the site and came across a number of drafts I pretty much completed but failed to post. Since we’re talking about baseball books and pop culture — which are timeless — and not the latest news, I thought I would make a mini-series of sorts. Unfortunately, some of the reference […]
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Getting an early start since I’m home and have binge-watched all I can stand for the moment. Didn’t post one of these last week, so curious to see how many — if any — brand new titles have made the list. So, shall we? Note: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists […]
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Bill James Handbook 2020 (Acta Sports 2019) Like the game itself, James has come a long way since his Abstracts of the late seventies and early eighties. He has grown into the guru of analytics. He has changed the way we look at the game, not just relying on “baseball card stats.” But can you […]
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Well, the good thing about late December and the beginning of winter is that by the time next week’s list rolls around, the days will be getting longer. Wouldn’t it make sense to have the shortest day in the middle of the season, and the longest somewhere in August? But I digress… Note: The Amazon […]
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Note: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish writing one). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes. In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one […]
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Headnote: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them. But it’ll be close enough for government work. In addition, sometimes the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category to which it […]
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Headnote: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them. But it’ll be close enough for government work. In addition, sometimes the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category to which it […]
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I don’t know how I missed this. Robinson would have been 100 years old on January 31. The Museum of the City of New York recently launched an exhibit titled “In the Dugout with Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait of a Baseball Legend.” And a brand new JR Museum — also located in New York […]
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Headnote: I’ve decided to bow to the times and include separate lists for e-books and audio books. Be aware that while many titles also appear in print versions, pretty much anyone can produce an e-book these days, so I’m not going to comment at all about the quality. As far as the audio goes, I’m […]
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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 Bookshelf Conversation #153: Paul Aron
October 17, 2022
Kudos to Paul Aron and the decision to name his newest project The Lineup: Ten Books That Changed Baseball. No superlatives, no grandiose claims, but a much more modest approach. And, indeed, these are books that not only changed the sport, but in some cases — as Aron explains both within the pages and our conversation […]
Tagged as: baseball books, Paul Aron
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