Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
I noted with some amusement a piece by Dan Graziano, the baseball writer for The Star-Ledger, in which he finds it necessary to spell out the phonetic pronunciation of the newly-acquired relief pitcher J.J. Putz (sounds like “pootz”). Putz, who had spent his entire six-year career with the Seattle Mariners, is used to being his […]
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Allen Barra cites Rob Neyer in this Wall Street Journal piece about the just-retired pitcher. He should have gotten John Feinstein, too, while he was at it.
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Too bad they can’t get rid of some of those annoying supplements that highlight fashion, furnishings, and vacations that “regular” folks can’t afford instead of doing away with Play, the Times‘ sports supplement. If the sports department is the toy store of a newspaper, I guess we won’t be getting much in the way of […]
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It used to be you had to wait until the following year to read about previous season. But now, thanks to all kinds of new technologies, it’s almost instantaneous. Baseball Insider, a special issue of Sports Weekly, does a great job of recapturing the excitement of the 2008 season while examining the strengths and weaknesses […]
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The Oklahoman’s sports columnist Berry Tramel offers this list of five favorite baseball novels, which does not contain many of the “usual suspects.”
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Recently, I was working on an article about Dave Kaplan, director of the Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls, NJ. Kaplan and Berra have collaborated on four books, so I headlined the story “Berra’s Boswell.” Thought that was pretty clever, comparing Kaplan (no relation) to the biographer of Samuel Johnson. Then my copy-editor asked about […]
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To commemorate the final game at Yankee and Shea Stadiums, some of the NY papers put out supplements with their editions. Newsday ran a 20-page insert, “Thanks for the Memories,” which included: “One final night to look,” by Mark Herrmann 21 events in Herrman’s “Catching up on history” (21. because the last game was played […]
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In this Allen Barra piece that appears in today’s Wall Street Journal, Rob Neyer wodners why the sue of instant rplay should be limited to home run calls? [The] author of “The Big Book of Baseball Blunders,” asks: “Why can’t umpires use replay in calling safe or out? Official scorers already use it to decide […]
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Jerome Holtzman, “the dean” of baseball writers, died on July 19 at the age of 82. Holtzman, who wrote for the Chicago-Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune, created the save, which has gone through several incarnations over the years and came under attack as being a “meaningless statistic.” He was a recipient of the 1989 […]
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Leave it to the NY Sun to cast a cloud over the final season of Yankee Stadium, castigating the ball club for what it didn’t do rather than highlight just the bright spots.
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The front page of the Sunday NY Times‘ travel section features this piece on the expansion of ballpark food. If the days of the hot dog, peanuts, and pretzels are not quite over, they have been supplemented by regional cuisine even — gasp — vegetarian items. The article includes an interactive map for the major […]
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Lots of baseball in today’s Times. In the Play supplement, a slide show offers tips from stars like George Brett on how hitters keep their weight back, identify pitches, hit the other way, go for the long ball (which chicks dig), adjust to right- and left-handed pitchers, adjust to the count, and prepare their swing […]
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From RotoNation.com, this piece on the plans for the financial stalwort’s newest “toy,” which was the brand old newspapers put on the sports department. Because it was fun. You play it, see? Sheesh.
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Funny how the editor of Deadspin.com has such disdain against traditional journalism except when he seems to benefit from it. Case in point, his article on the Chicago Cubs in the New York Times‘ “Play” supplement. On the other hand, is the newspaper just as “guilty” of providing the forum? I’m just askin’…
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According to this op-ed piece in the May 25 New York Times, in which the writer claims booing the home town team is among the most traitorous of behaviors imaginable.
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In his May 8 column, Carl Bialik, aka, The Numbers Guy, offers “a reading list of articles about sports numbers, from the true distance of legendary home runs to a formula for measuring the chance of a basketball comeback.” The baseball portion of the piece includes: 565: The number of feet Mickey Mantle’s home run […]
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This collection of mini-reviews includes: Anatomy of Baseball The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Pittsburgh Pirates Almost a Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the 1980 Phillies Ty Cobb: Safe at Home Keeping Score Change Up: An Oral History of 8 Key Events That Shaped Baseball
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To the consciousness of New York fans, that is. Former Mets’ manager Bobby Valentine was the subject of the May 4 “Questions for…” section of the New York Times‘ Sunday Magazine. Q; One American tradition you’ve imported to Japan is patting the players on the tush, as the film demonstrates. A: That has really been […]
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Time to play catch-up again. From Great Britain’s Guardian, this article about Billy Beane and the Moneyball phenomenon. Why on earth would it appear in a British paper? Because Beane is “Tottenham Hotspur fanatic, as well as a fan of the team’s coach, Sir Alex Ferguson. A list of recommended baseball novels from the Campaign […]
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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
* "I read it in the Times…
September 9, 2008
One day I’ll do some research to see how many baseball players had essays printed on the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times. This one is by Doug Glanville, who played in the Bigs from 1996-2004, on what it’s like to be a September call-up.
Tagged as: Doug Glanville, New York Times
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