Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
American City Business Journals has completed its acquisition of The Sporting News and moved its operations to Charlotte, NC. ACBJ also owns the Street & Smith Sports Group. TSN has been on a decline over the last several years. They recently made the decision to halt print publication of its annual baseball record book and […]
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Here’s a sneak preview of the latest edition of Play, The New York Times‘ sports supplement, which features an article by Jonathan Mahler (Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning) on the change in Yankees stewardship. Hal and Hank Steinbrenner have only been in charge a short while, but they’ve already alienating people with their […]
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Baseball America started the trend years ago, concentrating it editorial content on the minor leagues and college players. This publication began last year and includes reports on the top 300 in the systems (That seems like a lot, but when you figure it’s the top ten per team, it’s not so amazing. Still I’d hate […]
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Seattle’s Soothing Baseball Voice Headed to Cooperstown – If you’re lucky, your team’s baseball games are broadcast by an announcer like Dave Niehaus, voice of the Seattle Mariners since they first took the field 31 years ago. Neihuas was recently named recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Caple […]
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Let’s get the obvious out of the way: TSN‘s annual has pretty much the same team information — rosters, schedules, transactions, farm reports, impact rookies, and projected lineups — as every other magazine, as well as regional covers. A personal favorite feature is the statistical targets: Omar Vizquel is closest to 3,000 hits among active […]
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About 30 years ago or so, I really used to look forward to the March and April issues of Baseball Digest. The former was the annual issue devoted to the new crop of rookies, the later the yearly “data” issue, containing rosters, predictions, statistics, etc. Of course, “back in the day,” i.e., before the Internet, […]
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The New York Times “Play” supplement is turning into one of the better sports magazines around. Combining the newspaper’s reputation for journalism with slick production makes it entertaining and informative without making the reader feel guilty about wasting time reading about frivolous topics. The latest edition gives plenty of “ink” the the Clemens-McNamee hearings, along […]
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You know the season is just around the corner when the baseball annuals hit the newsstands. When I first developed an interest for the game, back in the mid 1960s, Street and Smith‘s — Likes Topps baseball cards — was the only game in town. Since then — again like Topps — other publications have […]
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Written by Charles Euchner, author of The Last Nine Innings,Little League: Big Dreams: Inside the Hope, the Hype, and the Glory of the Greatest World Series Ever Played, and Playing the Field: Why Sports Teams Move and Cities Fight to Keep Them.Upshot: “Are players using an ADD diagnosis to evade the amphetamine ban?” Powered by […]
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Hard to believe, but there are already sme fantasy baseball magazines on the magazine racks. Used to be Street and Smith’s was the only game in town; you knew the season was just a short time away when that became available. But time no longer matters when it comes to fantasy baseball. As soon as […]
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Don’t know what happened to my subscription to SI…I don’t remember any renewal notices/warnings…so I’ll have to kibbitz for awhile.In the wake of The Roger Clemens 60 Minutes/press conference, Richard Hoffer contributed this item on his outrage in the Jan. 14 issue. The illustration is especially appropriate, depicting Clemens firing his legendary fastball (at his […]
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when he asks in his column of Jan. 28 issue, “How do you put an asterisk on the best moment of your life? For him, and many Red Sox/Clemens fans, it was the second time he struck out 20. It came in a mediocre season against the Detroit Tiers and he movingly recreates the emotions […]
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COVER STORY: Deep in talent, Red Sox will be an imposing force again in 2008 Baseball Digest‘s all-star rookie team, by George Vass 2007 Player of the year: Phillies Jimmy Rollins, by John McMurray 2007 Pitcher of the year: Red Sox Josh Beckett, by Gordon Edes Baseball Profile: Devil Rays outfielder Carl Crawford, by Rick […]
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The New York Times recently ran this article about sportswriters as the new breed of free agent, moving from publication to publication for higher and higher salaries. Rick Reilly recently left Sports Illustrated for ESPN The Magazine, while Dan Patrick did the reverse (think of it as a trade of two superstars). These are just […]
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John Helyar, author Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball, one of my favorite books on the business aspects of the national pastime, weighed in on the “outduction” of Marvin Miller in the latest Hall of Fame elections for executives, umpires, and managers. In a Page2 column on ESPN.com, Helyar wrote: The longtime […]
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As it should be expected, the World Series gets cover treatment in Tom Verducci’s “Party’s Just Beginning.” The only other baseball item is the state of the Yankees now that Joe Torre has left the building.
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The current issue of Verbatim Magazine: The Language Quarterly (although dated Summer 2006!) has an unusual amount of baseball- and sports-related contributions. In addition to my humble offering — “Translating for the Old Ball Game,” an interview with Roger Kahlon, the interpreter for the Yankees’ Hideki Matsui) — the publication contains: “Baseball, Chicago-Style,” by Johnathan […]
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In a turn-of-the-millennium article in Discover magazine, Brad Lemley offered “20 Things That Won’t Change” by the year 2020, including: Baseball. Players will get bigger, 80-homer seasons may arrive, and something— women’s soccer?— will eat a larger slice of the sports viewership pie. But baseball will survive, predicts Joseph Coates of the future-megatrends consulting firm […]
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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
