Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
According to On This Day in Baseball History: A Day-by-Day Account of Baseball’s Most Indelible Moments: Despite winning the Triple Crown, Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams falls short in American League MVP voting, finishing 21 points behind second baseman Joe Gordon of the New York Yankees. There are too many books about Williams to list […]
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Last week I posted about the March issues of the old Baseball Digest which offered “scouting reports” on promising rookies. This week, it’s the American League’s turn. Don Baylor, Orioles, outfield: “Everything to make him big leaguer in two years.” Pretty accurate: it took him that long to play in more than nine ML games. […]
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Back when it actually was a “digest,” the then- monthly publication devoted its March issue to up-and-coming players. The March 1970 offering touted “Scouting Reports on…Rookies from the Confidential Files of Major League Clubs,” which I’m guessing was hyperbolic. Each “capsule” included the player’s DOB, height, weight, throwing and batting sides, a few minor league […]
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On this date in 1988, Orel Hershiser — who would go on to unanimously win the NL Cy Young Award — clinched the World Championship for the LA Dodgers with a 5-2 win over the Oakland As. Hershiser was 3-0 with a 1.05 ERA for the postseason after going 23-8 during the regular campaign in […]
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But sadly, Christy Walsh is no longer around. A lot of these TT posts are a product of laziness. I look around the house and see what might qualify. In this case, I was reconciling my checking account when my eyes fell on this on an adjacent bookshelf: Published in 1952, it obviously includes players […]
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Remind magazine is for “people of a certain age,” of which, for better or worse, I am now a member. Each issue is based on a theme but seems to devote itself primarily to TV shows from a specific period. (There was even a baseball issue published in May 2024, which led to my subscribing […]
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Riffing on Throwback Thursday… Saturday, October 3, is a triple anniversary. Baseball knows it as the date Bobby Thomson delivered “the Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” But it is also the birthday for two significant personalities: Hall of Fame outfielder Dave Winfield and blind sportswriter Ed Lucas. What else do these have in common? They […]
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50 Forgotten Cardinals: The Short Story of 50 Lesser Known and Sometimes Forgotten St. Louis Cardinals, by Will Saulsbery Now normally I wouldn’t review a book like this. It’s self published with many questionable choices as to layout and presentation. But it made me think of Joe Shlabotnik. Don’t bother looking him up on Baseball-Reference.com. […]
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So right now I’m reading Peter Gammons’ new book, It’s All About the Players: What I’ve Learned from Baseball’s Best, for a review for Bookreporter.com, which of course led me down another rabbit hole. Gammons is one of those special writers — I’m thinking here of Thomas Boswell, Tom Verducci, Roger Angell, and the like […]
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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
