Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
The actor who played the title role in the Dennis the Menace TV show (1959-1963), passed away yesterday at the age of 73. Here’s his obituary from The New York Times. The baseball connection? An episode from the third season featuring none other than Sandy Koufax in “Dennis and the Dodger.” Despite his reputation as […]
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What might have been. From the New York Times obituary by Michael S. Rosenwald: Joe DePugh, the Little League teammate of Bruce Springsteen who inspired the rocker’s hit song “Glory Days,” a rousing, bittersweet anthem to their hardscrabble childhoods in Freehold, N.J., where time passed by “in the wink of a young girl’s eye,” died on […]
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From The New York Times by George Vecsey: “Fay Vincent, a lawyer who presided over Major League Baseball as its eighth commissioner during a time when it was shaken by labor strife, the first shadows of steroid use and, quite literally, a powerful earthquake that interrupted the 1989 World Series, died on Saturday in Vero […]
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Two men who spent most of their playing days with the Dodgers — the former in Brooklyn, the latter in LA — passed away recently. Tommy Brown is in the record books as the youngest position player in Major League history. During World War II, when many established players were in the military, youngsters like […]
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In the latest Baseball Best-Seller post, I wrote at length about a self-published quickie about the late Bob Uecker. In fact, two more titles have been released since then. Well, it didn’t take long for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — a more “legitimate” source — to put out Bob Uecker: The Life and Career of […]
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We have all seen these iconic photographs, but how often do we appreciate the artist behind the lens? George Kalinsky was one such shutterbug. He passed away January 16 at the age of 88. Here’s his obituary by Harvey Araton in The New York Times. From the obit: Mr. Kalinsky had wanted to be a […]
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A reminder: 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 posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]
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One of the true characters of the game, Bob Uecker, has died at the age of 90. Here’s his obituary by Richard Sandomir in The New York Times and an article from ESPN. As a reminder that you’re an ex-player much longer than a player, Uecker turned a poor playing career (.200, 14 homers, 74 […]
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Bob Veale, one of those hard-throwing, glasses-wearing pitchers who stirred fear in the hearts of batter, died January 3 at the age of 86. The six-foot-six lefty spent most of his 13-year career with the Pittsburgh Pirates before spending his last three seasons with the Boston Red Sox. Here’s his obituary by Andrew Destin in […]
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I had put off an LWF piece on the passing of Rocky Colavito because I was preparing a Bookshelf Conversation with writer and long-time Indians fan Scott Raab. But in my excitement to have my good friend on as a guest, I plum forgot about the Rock. Colavito died December 10 at the age of […]
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Posting the piece about Lenny Randle reminded me of those end-of-year tributes by many outlets recalling the celebrities who passed away during the year. With that in mind, I thought it was appropriate to look back at the baseball figures who deaths were acknowledged on the Bookshelf. Note that the list includes a couple of […]
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Lenny Randle, perhaps best known on the field for trying to blow a baseball into foul territory, passed away last week at the age of 75. (He was also notorious for punching out Texas manager Frank Lucchesi in 1974.) Randle, who played just about ever position except for pitcher and catcher, made his debut with […]
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Still shocked that Rickey Henderson passed away at the age of 65, just a few days before his Christmas birthday. I always feel an extra pang of regret when someone younger than me dies. Henderson, was what many might call a colorful character. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009, accumulating 3,055 […]
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Two players from my youth recently passed away. I can’t explain it, but for some reason Rico Carty was the first non-Mets player I took a liking to. Looking at his baseball card from my first serious go at collecting in 1967, I remember being impressed with his stats and surprised he wasn’t mentioned in […]
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The first Little Leaguer to make it to the Majors, pitcher Joey Jay passed away Sept. 27 at the age of 89. Here’s his obituary from The New York Times by Richard Goldstein. Jay made his debut at the tender age of 17 with the Milwaukee Braves in 1953. He was traded to the Cincinnati […]
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Fernandomania. One of the greatest characters of late 20th century game passed away October 22 at the age of 63. The chunky lefty made his debut for the Dodgers as a September call-up in 1980, winning two decisions. The following year, he won his first eight games, five by shutouts, en route to a magical […]
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(Been on vacation for a bit to Hyannis. Unfortunately, it was after the Cape Code League had concluded so no games to attend or caps to purchase, although I was able to get a Harbor Hawks t-shirt.) It’s always a shock when I see a news flash on a crawl on the TV screen. While […]
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Lost in the tributes to baseball “legend” James Earl Jones was the passing of Ed Kranepool, one of the original New York Mets, who died Sunday at the age of 79 after struggling with heath issues for many years. Here’s his obituary by Richard Sandomir from The New York Times, which noted that “[Kranepool] is […]
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It was a shocker to see the breaking news on CNN on Monday that James Earl Jones had passed away. The tributes that followed seemed to highlight two roles: Darth Vader from the Star Wars universe and Terrence Mann from Field of Dreams. But Jones, who died at the age of 93, was also in […]
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Appearances to the contrary, Don Wert was not the quintessential “light hitting shortstop.” Over the course of his nine-year career, all but the last spent with the Detroit Tigers, he had four seasons of 10 or more homers to go along with slash line of .244/.314/.343 (notice how we’re getting farther and farther away from […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In my most recent "day job," I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted another blog. Busy, busy, busy.
I did a profile piece on the award-winning cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
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
