Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
From The Washington Post: Daniel Rapoport, a Washington journalist, author and publisher who in 1983 founded Farragut Publishing to produce non-blockbuster and out-of-the-ordinary books ranging from pasta salad and cold soup cookbooks to a history of U.S. presidents’ connections with baseball, died April 11 at his home in East Chatham, N.Y. He was 79. The writer […]
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No, the player born William Joseph Skowron was not Jewish, but there is a Jewish connection, no matter how tenuous. Skowron, a resident of Chicago, was a guest on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, the NPR news quiz show hosted by landsman Peter Sagal. Long story short, Skowron said some things that sounded so detailed […]
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The long-time editor of Baseball Digest died April 2 at the age of 87. Kuenster is another of those veterans of the publishing world I waited too long to try to interview. Others included Mark Harris (The Southpaw Trilogy) and Eliot Asinof (Eight Men, Out, Man on Spikes). So I’ve learned my lesson. Of all […]
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The journalism world lost another icon with the passing of Mike Wallace, the veteran CBS newsman known to more recent viewers as one of the original members of the 60 Minutes team. But Wallace, who passed away on Saturday at the age of 93, was also a straight news reporter and anchor, as well as, […]
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The long-time New Yorker cartoonist died on March 22 at the age of 100. Here’s his obit from The New York Times by Bruce Weber. The joke in the above cartoon is a bit hard to see; one ump has a picture of Roger Maris in his locker, while the other has one of […]
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The veteran boxing writer had a soft spot for the national pastime as well. He passed away today at the age of 75, the result of a cardiac arrest. He published Bert Sugar’s Baseball Hall of Fame: A Living History of America’s Greatest Game in 2009, as well as Hall of Fame Baseball Cards in […]
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One of the legends of the sportswriting world passed away yesterday at the age of 93. Bisher began writing for the Atlanta Journal Constitution in 1950, retiring in 2009. he began his newspaper career in 1938 at the Lumberton Voice in North Carolina. I recall him from his work as a region writer covering the […]
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The famed illustrator had much more important issues than baseball to draw about. From the NY Times obituary by Douglas Martin: With sketch pads in hand, Mr. McMahon covered momentous events in the civil rights struggle, spacecraft launchings, national political conventions and the Vatican, turning out line drawings for major magazines and newspapers. Many were […]
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When you’re a young kid, you don’t have any real concept of age. One of the first things you say to a new contemporary is, “I’m seven; how old are you?” When you go to camp, you think the counselors are adults, even though they’re only a few years your senior. But now that I’m […]
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NPR’s The Leonard Lopate Show replayed a 2008 interview with the late Hall of Famer, following the release of his book, Still a Kid at Heart: My Life in Baseball and Beyond. Jonah Keri, author of The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First and currently […]
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Carter lost his battle to cancer today at the age of 57. Here’s the NY Times obituary, by Richard Goldstein. Carter may have meant more to the fans of the Montreal Expos — where he played for 10 years — than the New York Mets. Here’s the Gazette‘s story, by Ian MacDonald. More on Carter: […]
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Bill Mardo in 1999. Mardo, who died Jan. 20 at the age of 88, was a journalist who worked for the Communist publication The Daily Worker in the 1940s-50s. Along with fellow MOTs Lester “Red” Rodney and Nat Low, Mardo — born William Bloom — agitated for baseball to break the color barrier, which paved […]
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I was over at the local Barnes and Noble and my eyes fell on The Obits: The New York Times Annual 2012. Being the morbid and curious fellow I am, I flipped through the book (the title is a bit odd, since obviously none of the obits are actually from 2012; they actually span Aug. […]
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This comes from Bobby Plapinger, proprietor of R. Plapinger Baseball Books, one of the best places to find those hard-to-acquire titles and collectibles, in memory of Goodwin Goldfaden, one of the “pioneers” of the baseball books and collectible world. Anyone who’s ever bought & certainly anyone who’s ever sold baseball books or publications or related material […]
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This one from MLB.com, which goes to show how respected he was in baseball circles.
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You won’t find his name among the players, coaches, managers, umpires, etc. on Baseball-Reference, but Greg was nevertheless an influential source, at least to me when it came to baseball books. Greg passed away Dec. 28. He was just 44 and had been in poor health for quite awhile. There aren’t a lot of entries […]
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The former pitcher and author of two no-hitters for the St. Louis Cardinals passed away Nov. 3. He lent his name to a book of anecdotes about his former team (he also pitched briefly for the Houston Astros) in Bob Forsch’s Tales from the Cardinal Dugout, published in 2003.
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It’s still too early to get all the details, but the former Orioles pitcher is dead of an apparent suicide. Flanagan pitched for 18 seasons, all but two spent with Baltimore. He compiled a record of 167-143 and won the Cy Young Award in 1979 with a career-best 23 wins. Following his retirement as a […]
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The Yankees free agent bust who caused no end of delight as the print media tried to figure out to relate an annoyed George Steinbrenner’s description of his overpriced pitcher as “a fat pussy toad,” was found dead in his suburban Los Angeles home yesterday. He was 42. In the New York Times obituary, the […]
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Richard Sandomir published this appreciation of Ruth Roberts, composer of “Meet The Mets” and a couple of other baseball ditties, who died on June 30.
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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
