Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Hard to believe it’s been 40 years since Joe Pepitone came out with his version of Ball Four with Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud, co-written with Berry Stainback. I remember getting this when it first came out as a selection of the short-lived Sports Illustrated Book Club. It was re-issued last year as a […]
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Via Bookreporter.com.
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Recapping Tom Hoffarth’s entertaining and educational series: April 1: The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, by Jeff Passan April 2: Baseball Field Guide: An In-Depth Illustrated Guide to the Complete Rules of Baseball, by Dan Formosa and Paul Hamburger April 3: The Cardinals Way: How One Team […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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Overlooked this from a couple of months ago. From “Sports Money” on Forbes.com, dated March 3, 2016: Major League Baseball has discontinued publishing the Green and Red Books, two media guides that provided scores of data on teams for a given season, plus historical information. According to the article by Maury Brown, the powers that […]
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My latest feature for Bookreporter.com includes Glenn Stout’s The Selling of the Babe: The Deal That Changed Baseball and Created a Legend Murray Klein’s Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball with the 1911 New York Giants Erik Sherman’s Kings of Queens: Life Beyond Baseball with the ’86 Mets
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April 15 is “Jackie Robinson Day,” marking the anniversary of his debut in 1947. In honor of the occasion, every player wears his number, 42, causing no little bit of confusion for broadcasters, especially when you consider how defensive shifts move infielders out of their normal positions. Robinson’s number is the only one retired from […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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In posting the weekly best-seller list, I usually include the image of a book making its Bookshelf debut. Notice how Author’s name. To me, it appears to be about 50 percent larger than the title of the book. Why is that? Inquiring minds want to know! Is it because Darling has become a national presence […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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The new normal in baseball literature is to publish something — anything — that pushes baseball analytics as the only logical way to assemble a team. Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game may may have been the first “official” book to address the concept, but there have been several since its […]
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In addition to the regular reasons — the signaling of the start of summer, the lazy evenings, the smell of the grass, etc. — I love the beginning of the baseball season because of the previews in the newspapers. These have often come in the form of supplements of substantial length and breadth and tailored, […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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Haven’t been posting much lately but I have a good excuse. No, really, I have a better reason. Just contracted to do a book focusing on Hank Greenberg‘s 1938 season in which he put up a valiant fight to break Babe Ruth‘s single-season home run record of 60. The as-yet untitled project will also take […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Forgive the nihilism, but such is the meaninglessness of life. I was about to line the bottom of the birdcage this morning and just happened to notice that one of the pages carried the obituary for “Tom Knight, 89; Knew It All About Brooklyn Baseball.” The 750-plus-word New York Times tribute was written by by […]
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Ken Burns was on the show yesterday to discuss his upcoming documentary on Jackie Robinson, to be aired next month on PBS. If they’d just done this a few days earlier, it would have been a perfect feature for Black History Month. But I can also understand that you don’t want to publicize something […]
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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
