Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Wow, has it really been more than a month since the last one of these? Yikes. As you may have notice, these entries have been falling off in the last several weeks. My apologies. A new full-time job — very different from what I had been doing as the sports and features editor of a […]
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As you may have notice, these entries have been falling off in the last several weeks. My apologies. A new full-time job — very different from what I had been doing as the sports and features editor of a weekly community newspaper in suburban New Jersey — has put new and strange demands on my […]
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Now available: At long last I’m happy to announce the official release of my latest book, Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War. Support your local local bookstore and tell your friends! Merci. Save Save Save Save
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The teacher and lecturer who published The Big Book of Jewish Baseball with his son Joachim, died in Raleigh, NC, last Saturday at the age of 71. This was one of those Jewish “reference books” I’m betting a lot of kids received as a bar mitzva or Hanukka present. Horvitz also wrote The Big Book […]
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This story from The New York Times about the baseball card hobby goes from A (Jeff Aeder, aka the prospective buyer) to Z (Guy Zinn, the rare item in question). It also comes on the heels of a discovery I had in my attic while looking for books to donate to the nearby Yogi Berra […]
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I just finished the first round of edits on the manuscript for my forthcoming book, Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War (scheduled for release April 4, 2017. Just sayin’.) The last chapter deals with Greenberg’s final playing season as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1947. There’s […]
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If my mother were still alive, she’d probably have this framed and place it on a bookshelf.
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Hello, friends. Been awhile. Apologies for the dearth of entries lately. Especially now that the season is over and your team’s season is over — unless your a Cubs or Indians fan — you’ll look for the comfort of books to get you through the long cold winter — unless you’re a resident of Florida, […]
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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 […]
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As the sports editor for a weekly Jewish publication, I always have my antenna out for anything that pertains to this niche topic. You might be surprised, but as someone so connected with Jews and sports, it’s amazing the number of times I come across reference to the scene from Airplane and the variations thereof […]
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by Abie Rotenberg. Feldheim, 2015, $22.99 hardcover; $14.99 paperback; $9.99 Kindle. If I get excited when a new Jewish Major Leaguer pops up on the scene, imagine how I feel when there’s a new book with a Jewish baseball theme. So when I saw this novel by Rotenberg in one of my Amazon searches for […]
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If he had just been a Jewish ballplayer, dayenu, it would have been enough. If he had just been arguably the best pitcher of his generation, dayenu. But when Sandy Koufax declined to take the mound for the first game of the 1965 World Series? More than enough. Fifty years later, Koufax’s decision to sit […]
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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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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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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
Throwback Thursday (aka, links dump)
September 10, 2015 · 1 comment
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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