Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
From November 26, 2007. I miss Sports Illustrated. But then, I miss a lot of print publications, including the one I used to work for from 2004-2016. After more than 20 years working for a religious non-profit organization, I was unceremoniously downsized. It took almost two years but after doing some freelance work for the […]
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When I was about 10 years old, I got into a heap of trouble because I spent some of the change from an errand on a copy of The Sporting News and Baseball Digest. Total cost: $1. In retrospect, I understand the difficult financial situation my family was in at the time, but at that age, I […]
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While looking for Robert Benson’s The Game for last week’s BBS post, I found my collection of baseball annuals, specifically Street and Smith’s Official Baseball Yearbook for 1975. What a treat. The articles included profiles of Frank Robinson and designated hitters; Lou Brock’s 118 stolen bases and the impact that had on other thieves in […]
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What is this world coming to? It was bad enough when Sports Illustrated laid off many of the staff that made the magazine “illustrated” to begin with. I was bad enough when it went from a weekly to a bi-weekly to a monthly to just online. But now? “Sports Illustrated lays off most of its […]
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More and more, it seems the players I grew up admiring as a teenager are shuffling off this mortal coil. This includes Hall of Famers, Greats, Near-Greats, and ordinary lunch bucket guys. The latest from that “generation” is Vida Blue, who passed away Saturday at the age of 73. Here’s his obituary by Alex Traub […]
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When it comes to baseball. Of course, much of that was due to Roger Angell‘s excellent essays. Yes, there have been other contributors, but none with the gravitas or tenure of Angell. There have been plenty of covers and cartoons about the national pastime. Many, of the former, including the cover of the current issue, […]
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Every year since I was a little shaver, I looked forward to the period from February to April when the annual baseball magazines would come out. At one point, it was basically Smith and Street, but over the years others would crop up. Some would last, others would not. Among the baseball preview issues in […]
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Used to be around this time of year you could look forward to the baseball annuals from Street & Smith, Athlon, Lindy’s, and a host of other magazine publishers. Of course, back in the day there were many others put out by the likes of The Sporting News, Major League Baseball, Bill Mazeroski, with Baseball […]
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Because of MLB’s recent labor problems , I really didn’t expect to see the regular baseball annuals come out at the usual time — late January, early February. I was at my local CVS and while waiting for prescriptions, I found the new Lindy’s 2022 Preview issue. The website said these were available Feb. 23 […]
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The August 23 edition of The New Yorker features an interesting/disheartening article by Zach Helfand on the imminent (?) arrival of automated umpiring systems to call balls and strikes. A telling quote from the story: According to Sword, A.B.S. was part of a larger project to make baseball more exciting. Executives are terrified of losing […]
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Just curious. These days, there are less than a handful of annual baseball magazines that are not devoted to the fantasy aspects of the game. While the features and team profiles are the same from each publisher, they often have different covers depending on the market to which they are distributed. I almost bought the […]
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Or WHIP? Or some other 21st century stat? Recently picked up the first baseball magazine of the year — Lindy’s Sports Baseball 2021 Preview — and feel it’s already useless. Predictions are a main feature of most of these publications. Problem is, because they are prepared and released weeks before the season starts, they cannot […]
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My baseball library is divided into three main sections: the attic, my basement office, and the rest of the house. I was cleaning the attic yesterday, because what else is there to do? While trying to cull the herd, putting things in boxes to eventually give away or ::shudder:: throw out, I can across a […]
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With apologies to Shakespeare. I received this link from a high school classmate today about a treasure trove of baseball cards found in the attic of a recently deceased 97-year-old. (Thanks, Terry!) I have fantasies about some friend or colleague telling me a loved one wants to just get rid of a bunch of old […]
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The next-best thing to colera? A roundabout way to say that I picked up the baseball preview issue of Sports Illustrated, now in its new iteration (Dated “Spring 2020”). Of course, I realize that this is no longer a weekly publication, let alone a website that’s constantly updated. And to be fair, I don’t know […]
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Sometimes I get grief when I complain about the quality of baseball films. My friends say I’m being too hard because I know and expect too much. In the words of that great philosopher, Steve Martin But I came across this on Youtube and thought it was pretty cool: Joc Pederson, Justin Turner, and Ferris, […]
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when the baseball magazines hit the stores. When you think about them, these publications seem quite quaint. After all, once you commit to putting something in print, it’s pretty much outdated the minute you put it on the shelf. Sure, some things remain the same, such as last season’s statistics. Since numbers are numbers, they […]
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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
The end of an era?
April 4, 2023
My copy of Lindy’s Sports Baseball 2023 Preview arrived in the mail yesterday. This is what it has come to. I couldn’t find it at any of my usual outlets: CVS, the local newsstand, or even Barnes and Noble, so I had to order it online. It may be the last such publication I buy. […]
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