Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
and I’ll be grateful for about 2 1/2 extra years, according to this piece from The Wall Street Journal. … researchers at Wayne State University, major-league players who have nicknames live 2½ years longer, on average, than those without them. On the other hand, I can absolutely refute further findings that “players whose first or […]
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Thanks to the NY Times’ Freakonomics blog, I came across FlipFlopFlyball, an off-shoot of flipflopflyin.com, which offers some unusual charts regarding the national pastime. In one, we see just how many Native Americans actually live in Cleveland (which gave me a few ideas for future charts)*, an unusual representation of when teams broke the color line, […]
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by Brent Mayne. I put the question mark in there because I’m not sure what to make of this irreverent piece by the colorful Jimmy Scott who reminds me more and more of a Martin Short character. What separates The Art of Catching from any other book, like A Tale of Two Cities or The […]
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Not really, but a funny take on what might be, courtesy of Jon Bois on Fanhouse.com.
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Move over, Jose. Roger Clemens wants to join the band of ballplayers turned … well, words fail me. According to news reports, Clemens is considering writing his own book to answer allegations about his use of PED. During an on-line interview on Houstonist.com, the question was asked, “Do you believe that you will get a […]
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Thanks to Gabriel Schechter, author of This Bad Day in Yankees History, who delivered the following poem at the recent Cooperstown Symposium. Baseball’s Glad Lexicon These are the gladdest of possible words: Dickson has done it again. Trio of volumes each jam-packed with gems From “A-ball” to “lulu” to “zurdo.” Re-shaping his lexicon into the […]
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Because you can’t beat a dead horse enough: Alyssa Milano: Since nobody cares anymore about Alyssa Milano as an actress anymore, she apparently has concluded that we should all care that she’s a big enough baseball fan to write a book about herself going to games, sell sports-related clothing to women, and seduce at least […]
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Reading Barra’s Berra bio and came across mention of Yogi and several teammates appearing on an episode of Sgt. Bilko, starring Phil Silvers. Here’s a synposis from IMDB.com Bilko’s Company B gets beaten at Baseball by the WACs and with a big game against Ritzik and Grover coming up he is in dire need of […]
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Another piece of trivia: Phil Rizzuot was a guest on the premier of the popular TV game show, What’s My Line? (Feb. 2, 1950). I was tickled by the formality between the host and the panelists. Compare that with today’s beauts like Deal or No Deal.
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A.K.A. Steve Lyons. The nine-year veteran has done well for himself in retirement, currently working in the broadcast booth for the Dodgers. He’s the coauthor of The Psycho 100, an entertaining — if somewhat uneven — collection of outrageous moments in the game, which I will review at a later date. Lyons turns 49 today.
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Meant to post this as it happened. The best laid plans… So what’s up with the recent rash of line-up mistakes? First Tampa Bay skipper Joe Maddon inserts two players in the third baseman position and no one as a DH, thereby losing that offensive possibility and forcing pitcher Andy Sonnanstine to tote lumber. Fortunately, […]
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From the SABR List-serve: Marc Okkonen’s terrific pictorial book, 2000 Cups of Coffee, is now available for download on the members-only portion of the SABR website. You can find a link to it as soon as you log onto the members’ page. This book contains images of approximately 2,000 major leaguers of the 1900-1949 era. […]
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Having eaten at Mickey Mantle’s Manhattan restaurant, I found this review of a two-year old book by owner William Liederman interesting yet curious (because of the timing). Nothing to especially recommend it other than the subject matter. It’s a throwback to the days of Toot Shor‘s.
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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
