Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
The Aug. 13-19 issue of Sports Business Journal carried this interview with Drayton McLane, chairman and CEO of the Houston Astros, One of the questions asked and asnwered: SBJ: The game’s key business metrics, such as attendance, TV ratings and overall revenue, are all up this season, as we expected, but is there a ceiling […]
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Many years ago, Louisville Slugger used to put out an annual yearbook that was available primarily as a premium through sport good stores. I found this interesting source at Scribd.com.
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The Sept. 2007 edition of Play, an occasional supplement in the Sunday Times, features “The Art of Pitching,” a “primer” on pitching by the Yankee’s Mike Mussina, as told to Tyler Kepner. Mussina a 17-year-veteran, discusses how he deals with situational pitching, including “The Tough Out,” personified by the Orioles’ Brian Robert; “The Power Hitter” […]
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This week SI features its College Football Preview, so there’s little in the way of baseball items, relatively speaking. The main story: With the Bonds watch over, baseball shifted its spotlight to a group of first-year stars — one a teenager — helping to shape tight playoff battles. Other baseball items: The Reinvention of Rick […]
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This is a sad day for Carmen and me. Phil was a gem, one of the greatest people I ever knew – a dear friend and great teammate. He was a heck of a player, too. When I first came up to the Yankees, he was like a big, actually small, brother to me. He’s […]
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I was listening to the Mets game today and came in the middle of a comment from one of their announcers. All I got was the suspicion by someone that Hank Aaron might have received payment for his congratulatory message to Barry Bonds following the record breaking home run. Now, coming in the middle of […]
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By necessity, the Aug. 13 issue of SI did not include Barry Bonds’ momentous occasion. Working for a weekly pubication myself, I appreciate the problems of trying to include the latest news when you have to go press, even while that news is happening. However SI does feature, as its cover story, Bonds’ 755th home […]
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The medias keeps coming up with new ways to dismiss Barry Bonds’ accomplishments. First it was performance enhancing drugs. Now it’s the elbow protection he wears to the plate. In an commentary from the Aug. 6 edition of EditorandPublisher.com, illustrator Michael Witte claims the device “may have contributed to no fewer than 75 to 100 […]
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As a stand-alone from the previous entry about baseball fiction, I found an extensive list of science fiction/baseball stories, as compiled by Steven Silver. Many of these have appeared in various SF pulp anthologies, rather than as full out novels. I don’t know if I’d agree with each entry; for example, I wonder if some […]
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One of my favorite publications has been Baseball Digest. Over the years, this compact dynamo has brought legends and lightweights to fans all over the world. This month’s issue includes features on The increasing influence of Japanese players by Gordon Edes of the Boston Globe Strange plays, by veteran baseball writer George Vass A look […]
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From the July/August 2006 issue of American Jewish Life, an Atlanta-based publication, this profile of Ron Blomberg on the release of his memoir, Designated Hebrew. The May/June 2007 issue features several baseball stories, including: “Why Every American Jew Should Love the Boston Red Sox and Hate the New York Yankees: the Annotated Edition“, by Bradford […]
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If you’re going to give a book, give big, I always say. Coffee table editions are especially welcome and if the topic happens to be baseball, so much the better. It sometimes seems unfair that publications like Sports Illustrated can simply reach into 50 years-worth of archives at any time and pull a gem out […]
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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
Report: Do Umpires Discriminate?
August 22, 2007
Charges of “ism” — racism, sexism, agism, etc. — always make for hot topics and the media loves to jump on any information, sometimes a bit too quickly, or without fully understanding the material/source/etc. Case in point: In the Aug. 13 edition of Time magazine, Katie Rooney asks the button-pushing question “Are Baseball Umpires Racist?” […]
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