Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
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 After all, once you commit to putting something in print, it’s pretty much outdated the minute you put it on the shelf.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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It might have been a nice idea to pair their recent cover with a Roger Angell story, but I’ll take what I can get.
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I am not prone to using profanity on any of my blogs but when I picked up my MLB Preview, what did I see? A photo of Le’veon Bell, the NY Jets big deal. Now, I know that the baseball annuals tailor their covers according to region, but this? Inexcusable. There shouldn’t be anything other […]
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I was so desperate for baseball news, I actually bought a fantasy magazine a few weeks ago. I’ll be honest: in the past few years, the game has lost its allure for me. Not the literary or historical aspects, but the actual guys who are currently playing. So I make my annual “resolution” to be […]
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Headnote: I’ve decided to bow to the times and include separate lists for e-books and audio books. Be aware that while many titles also appear in print versions, pretty much anyone can produce an e-book these days, so I’m not going to comment at all about the quality. As far as the audio goes, I’m […]
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Those of you who have been following this blog for awhile know that I like to do a “compare & contrast” of the baseball preview issues for Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine in which I would look at the features and predictions for each, as well as examine “the next big thing” that captured […]
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By now most of you are familiar with my caveats, so I’ll just mention them briefly: The list includes only print editions (no kindle or audio versions) because I’m old school. Second, since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them. But […]
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By now, most of you are familiar with my caveats, so I’ll just mention it briefly: The list includes only print editions (no kindle or audio versions) because I’m old school. Second, since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them. But […]
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Sorry, don’t know how to make a backwards “R.” People love lists, so websites and blogs give the people what they want. Sometimes the lists come in one long page, other times you have to scroll through slide shows, thereby increasing your time on the site which helps their analytics. Don’t get me started on […]
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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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Mazel tov to Michael Leahy, winner of the 2016 CASEY Award presented by Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine, as the best baseball book of the year for The Last Innocents: The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers. It is certainly one of my all-time favorites; if I ever get a chance […]
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Been busy finalizing my forthcoming book, Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War, which has severely reduced my Bookshelf time. (Even got my first blurb! Very cool.) So in attempt to play catch-up… It’s nice to have your book referenced in a story. You never know that it might […]
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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 […]
{ 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 }
What is it, two days after the Cubs won the series and while compiling the (usually) weekly list of baseball best-sellers, there are publications about the team that weren’t even listed when I did my search for items coming down the pike (although, to be strictly accurate, I was basically looking at 2017 items). So […]
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ESPN the Magazine (Cover price: $5.99) Maybe it’s an age thing, I found ESPN’s attempt to replicate old English (or whatever the hell they were trying to accomplish), pretty difficult to read. It would have been enough if they had just used it on the cover, but they compound the error (IMO) repeatedly Once again, […]
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Earlier this month, I posted about the joys and sorrows of the rare creature known as the baseball magazine. And we’re not talking about those publications geared specifically towards fantasy baseball enthusiasts; goodness knows there are plenty of those. Last week I picked up a copy of another perennial favorite of mine, Athlon Sports’ 2016 […]
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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
