Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Full disclosure: Prior to this, I have never watched more than a few minutes of DWTS in any of its previous seasons. I know sports figures have competed and some have acquitted themselves very well, but I can only guess the idea to have a bunch of athletes as a stand-alone theme was one of […]
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The Kearny, NJ-based Observer is holding an essay contest on favorite summer baseball memories. From the online story: Enter the contest by sending your family baseball memories — you can even write the memories together as a family — to us at editorial@theobserver.com by Wednesday, June 13, at 3 p.m. (Entries received thereafter won’t be […]
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I had to go to my local library site to renew some stuff and saw this: Also someone stopped by the house to have me sign a copy of 501 Baseball Books. That hasn’t happened for awhile. Sweet.
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This story from The New York Times about the baseball card hobby goes from A (Jeff Aeder, aka the prospective buyer) to Z (Guy Zinn, the rare item in question). It also comes on the heels of a discovery I had in my attic while looking for books to donate to the nearby Yogi Berra […]
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There has been speculation about what might have been for Cuba and the world had Fidel Castro passed muster for scouts in his baseball tryouts. Tim Wendell wrote about in his novel, Castro’s Curveball. Now it seems the same could be said about our president-elect. From Philly.com: “Report: The Phillies once scouted Donald Trump as […]
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It’s been said about Moe Berg that he could speak seven (or 10 or 12) languages but couldn’t hit in any of them. Baseball signed by World War II spy sells for over $17,000 Upshot: One of only two baseballs known to be signed by Moe Berg, a former major league catcher who served as […]
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Just happened to turn on the TV to Turner Classic Movie channel. Comrade X, a 1940 romantic comedy starring Clark Gable and Hedy Lamar, was on at this scene: Gable’s character, an American journalist visiting Russia, is arguing about communism with Lamar, a local streetcar conductor. She tries to tell him how bad America is, […]
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According to this piece from Deadspin, “Give Theo Epstein And Bill Murray A Buddy Cop Movie, Now.” Just, please, no Daffy Duck voices. Yesterday’s Pardon the Interruption hailed Epstein as not among the pantheon of great baseball executives, but the pantheon of great baseball executives. You can listen to the podcast version here and then […]
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So if that was indeed his last major league game, David Ross hit a home run in his final official at bat last night. That it came in the seventh game of a World Series that gave the Chicago Cubs and their long-suffering fans a championship for the first time since Teddy Roosevelt was president […]
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Whoda thunk it? But according to this piece –“Baseball Meets Horror” — by Bruce Markusen in the “Cooperstown Confidential” portion of The Hardball Times, yep.
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As a “reward” for having my submission on an episode of Deadwood accepted into the Extra Hot Great canon (you can go ahead and skip to about the 37-minute mark), I got to choose a topic for an “EHG mini.” Shouldn’t surprise anyone that I found a way to combine my two favorite pastimes — sports […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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A few weeks back I did a review of Chuck Klosterman’s latest book, But What If We’re Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past. Klosterman refereed to The Book of Predictions as an example of just how wrong people can be. It’s fun to look at some of the entries in Predictions — […]
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“The unwritten rules of baseball, courtesy of Goose Gossage and the St. Paul Saints.” I’ll be looking for this on eBay very soon. But wait, if the unwritten rules are written, doesn’t that no longer make them unwritten, which means everything is written now?
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The actor Alan Young passed away at the age of 96 on Thursday. Baseball connection? Several of the Dodgers, including Sandy Koufax, John Roseboro, Willie Davis, and Moose Skowron appeared as themselves, as well as the voice of Vin Scully.
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There has to be something going on on Jeopardy. How else to explain the high number of clues regarding baseball over the past several weeks. It seems like there is at least one reference per week. Sometimes an entire category is devoted to some aspect of the national pastime as in this from last night’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
My (fantasy) Q&A with Sandy Koufax
January 28, 2018
“Who would be your fantasy interview?” I think I speak for a lot of Jewish fans when I say it would be Sandy Koufax. These are some of the questions I would ask, assuming he was bound to answer honestly and not just sit there sipping his wine. What was really behind the decision not […]
Tagged as: Sandy Koufax
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