Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Van Lingle Mungo, born 100 years ago today, pitched for 14 seasons (1931-43,1945) for the Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants. While he wasn’t a superstar, he did win 120 games, including four seasons of 16 or more victories. Somewhere I have a paper I delivered, deconstructing the out the Dave Frishberg song about players from […]
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Here’s something you don’t see every day: a 3-2-6-1-5-3-4-6-8 double play pulled off by the Double-A New Britain Rock Cats against the Binghamton Mets. You need a scorecard with extra large boxes for that one.
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Or, “The Cursed Pen.” What is it with the current batch of players who desire to be writers? First it was Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey who announced in spring training that he was going to pen a memoir. So he’s currently 2-5 with a 4.50 ERA and just came out of his start against the […]
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The American troubadour turned 70 yesterday. So what does Dylan have to do with baseball? (Is that a rhetorical question? Obviously, or I wouldn’t have asked it.) In 2006, Dylan featured baseball music and poetry in his “Theme Time Radio Hour” on XM Satellite Radio. The one-hour program, available on CD, consisted of several of […]
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As long as it’s just one or the other, that’s not too bad… This comes from Great Scot!, a blog from Scot Drucker, a minor league pitcher in the Tigers’ system: “Someone is going to get seriously hurt or injured“
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“MLB probes Dodgers’ Ethier for obscene gesture” Two thoughts: A) What are they hoping to find and where, exactly? B) Isn’t that a bit harsh punishment for flipping the bird to someone?
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“You got to have a lot of little boy in you to play this game.” Even if the game is “just” softball. Thanks to my own senior softball team manager, Sam, for passing this along.
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Because you can put brains on a bookshelf, which is where this guy obviously left his. (Courtesy demotivationals4U.com)
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The veteran pitcher turns 34 today. Last year he gathered some of his teammates to collaborate on the yummy Chicago Cubs Cookbook: All-Star Recipes from Your Favorite Players.
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So I was tooling around seeing what’s going on around the diamond today and came across an ESPN list of how this year’s rookies are doing. Just looking at the batters, there are three ways of judging their accomplishments: regular statistics, pretty much the kind of info you used to be able to find on […]
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Apropos to yesterday’s Bits and Pieces entry about rankings of caps and logos, here’s one from the Getting Blanked blog about the best-selling jerseys. Personally I never quite understood wearing someone else’s name on your person, although the whole psychological study of BIRG (basking in reflected glory) is fascinating. (When I played softball at Marine […]
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“Any rebroadcast, reproduction [emphasis added] or other use of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited.” Or not: “Library of Congress Buys Audio Archive“: The library will announce the purchase of [emphasis added] the audio recordings on Wednesday. The archive belonged to John Miley, an 80-year-old retired businessman in […]
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Baseball and The Simpsons. In the latest episode, Grandpa Abe serves as a guinea pig for a drug that will turn him from grumpy to glad. In order to test the product’s viability, the phrama testers experiment with several variations until the seemingly find the right one. The head of the company wants to make […]
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but were afraid to ask. “WAR! Huh! Good God, y’all, what is it good for?” (Bet you didn’t know R&B singer Edwin Starr was a stat-head.)
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Heading over the the Yogi Berra Museum later to see what interesting items they have to offer. If they have this at a decent price, I just might indulge: For some reason, even though I didn’t start really collecting until the 1967 set, the ’65 is one of my favorites. The sale is scheduled from […]
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First that, now this? (You have to look at the ad closely.) Good to see the person who sewed the letters on the uniform was able to find employment again.
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And not just because Charlie Sheen is associated with it. Why do the folks in Hollywood think it’s such a great idea to bring back a franchise several years — in some cases decades — later? Case in point: Sheen has expressed interest in revisiting the Major League franchise, resurrecting Rickey “Wild Thing” Vaughn. He […]
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This interesting concept comes from ehow.com. On second thought, there’s really no reason a regular fan with a room to spare couldn’t follow these instructions to create a mini-museum at home.
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Brooklyn Cyclones give Aguilera second shot at National anthem? From the AP item: Cyclones general manager Steve Cohen [Editor’s Note: MOT?] said in a statement that “when a player makes a mistake, they usually don’t get a shot at redemption, but with a singer, that’s a different story.” Speaking of the Cyclones, they were included […]
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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
