Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Except replace “still” with “not” and “rock and roll” with “baseball.” 60 Minutes featured a segment on the Savannah Bananas in its April 13 episode. Jesse Cole, the man behind the (yellow) curtain, has written several books about the team and marketing, including Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas, which is […]
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Pete Peterson’s national public radio program, Reading Baseball, just celebrated its 400th episode! Mazel tov. Pittsburgh pitcher Paul Skenes is included in Esquire’s “Mavericks of Sports 2025” feature. Skenes is also featured in today’s New York Times Magazine piece, “How Analytics Marginalized Baseball’s Superstar Pitchers: Why has pro baseball made it so hard for today’s […]
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What do Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabbathia, and Billy Wagner all have in common? Oh, yeah, sure, they were all just elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. But wait, there’s more. That’s right; they’ve all written memoirs. Ichiro’s book was published in 2004. There are other books about him, including The Meaning of Ichiro: […]
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I am a great believer in the serial (Oxford) comma. It;’s pretty much in the stylebook for every outlet for which I’ve written. And you can find lots of arguments for and against its use. But I’ve never seen in discussed in respect to baseball books until now. Submitted for your entertainment and/or amusement, this […]
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Because you can keep them on your bookshelf. Not that I’m a fashion maven, but I never liked the flat brim look. A pet peeve of mine. Kudos to the writers of Reacher.
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Passover is over. Inevitably, we buy too many boxes of matzo and the question then becomes, what do you do with the leftovers? Sure, you can eat this stuff all year round, but would you really want to? I suppose I could ship it off to Alex Bregman…
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This popped up on my daily Google alerts for baseball book-related stuff from Fine Books & Collections: “Early Baseball Sheet Music, Arrowsmith’s Maps, JFK Presentation Copy: Auction Preview” Image: Potter & Potter — “The earliest known baseball lithograph, for “The Live Oak Polka,” offered at Potter & Potter this week.” According to the accompanying story […]
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If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know my affection for the NPR news quiz, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. And every now and then, they’ll throw me a bone my including some baseball content. Examples include an interview with Moose Skowron which led me down a rabbit hole when it comes […]
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Because you can put your baseball cap on a shelf: From the ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION BEWILDERED BY ATHLEISURE AND BASEBALL CAPS DEAR MISS MANNERS: Returning to the United States after several years of living in Europe, I have noticed that “athleisure” wear is acceptable everywhere, and that wearing baseball hats in restaurants (done by people […]
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Come on, you can’t blame FOX for reporting on the death of The Big Hurt, mistaking him for the other Frank Thomas. What, you expect them to actually, like, fact check? It’s so ridiculous that even this British news outlet reported on it: “Fox News apologises after claiming baseball MLB Hall of Famer had died” […]
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Taking some time off in Pittsfield, MA, to celebrate 35th anniversary with the missus. Right across the street from our lodgings is a Stop and Shop. Was hoping visit Wacunah Park but these days it’s used by one of the pre-pre college leagues/teams. And t’isnt the season. But there is a great store in Pittsfield — […]
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How long until journalists are totally replaced by AI? This piece from BVMSports.comabout Joe Posnanski’s new book, Why We Love Baseball, comes with the disclaimer, “The summary of the linked article was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence technology from OpenAI.” According to the site’s “About” link, “BVM Sports is a media entity dedicated […]
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♦ It’s been a very long time since I wrote about the Baseball Project, “a supergroup that includes several former members of R.E.M. and makes music exclusively about the sport,” according to this new article from The New Yorker. ♦ Hot on the heels of the new Netflx documentary The Saint of Second Chances this […]
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I used to be so good in math. I don’t know what happened. Oh, sure, I can figure out most of the standard baseball stats, although I’ve always arched my eyebrows at the formulas offered in such books as Encyclopedia of Baseball Statistics: From A to Zr or Beyond Batting Average. One of the first […]
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One hundred. It’s a nice, round number. Picking from the thousands of moments in baseball history is a daunting task. Those who take it on have a responsibility to do the due diligence to separate the merely good from the truly magnificent. Kind of like parsing out true Hall of Famers from those who just […]
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♦ Soon to be a major motion picture? “For Maggi, 1st MLB hit proves ‘you can do anything’” ♦ The ReviewGeek judges Cross Game, by Mitsuru Adachi, among the best sport mangas. ♦ Speaking of the late Vin Scully, how will you do on this quiz about baseball broadcasters from the Chicago Sun-Times? Warning: it […]
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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes. (See my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks.”) In addition, occasionally […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In my most recent "day job," I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted another blog. Busy, busy, busy.
I did a profile piece on the award-winning cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
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
Nothing succeeds like Succession (Bill Wambsganss)
May 25, 2023
SPOILER ALERT Succession is one of the best — and annoying — TV shows around. Generally, I don’t like shows that glorify the ultra-rich. And I wonder how this is considered a “dramedy,” even though there are some very funny lines in it. My daughter, Rachel, found this Tik-Tok piece from Nameberry.com that theorizes about […]
Tagged as: Bill Wambsganss, Succession
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