Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
♦ The Minnesota Spokesman Record, an African-America newspaper, posted this review of They Played for the Love of the Game: Untold Stories of Black Baseball in Minnesota, published by Frank M. White. ♦ The Lincoln (NE) Journal Star provided this piece on Roger Angell‘s memoir, This Old Man: All in Pieces. I still maintain this […]
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Last month I included a mention of Baseball and the Law: Cases and Materials by Judge Lou Schiff and Nova Southeastern Law School Professor Robert Jarvis in a “Bits and Pieces” entry. I noted that it was pricey volume ($114 on Amazon) and the judge sent an email pointing out that yes, legal books were expensive […]
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It’s widely agreed that baseball movies as a rule don’t do well either at the box office or with critics. Sure there are exceptions — Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and the original Bad News Bears immediately come to mind. But by and large, meh. Case in point: I recently watched a MLB Network presentation […]
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Make’s it official then. Abbot and Costello’s seminal “Who’s on First” routine was selected by Vulture as among the “The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy.” The jokes are listed in chronological order, not by funniest. In fact the title of the piece makes no promise along those lines. From the Vulture commentary: No single […]
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It’s holiday time and what’s more timely for baseball fans than a goo book, or some baseball cards, or anything else that can fit on a bookshelf, or perhaps more relevant, under a tree? Another post about opening up some packs. Nom, nom, nom. A tasty treat on Baltimore Baseball & Barbecue with Boog […]
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Feats or famine. Either there is never a question about baseball on the popular game show, or you have this situation. That day after Mark Blankenship got his baseball movie answer correct we witnessed this in the Double Jeopardy round: In the category “Honest ‘ABE’”(the answer contained those three letters; covered words: “a research society.”) […]
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More or less. One of my appointment podcasts is Extra Hot Great, a smart, funny, and occasionally vulgar program on pop culture. One of my appointment TV shows is Jeopardy. Last night, Mark Blankenship, one of the regular panelists on EHG, was a contestant on Jeopardy. It’s like getting peanut butter on your chocolate. Blankenship […]
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As previously mentioned, I have given away a lot of the books from my baseball library. That’s freed up a lot of room in the attic, but there’s still lots to sift through as I shift things around, still discarding some items while moving others to my main office in the basement. As anyone who […]
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I bet they even have that some place. The movie movie has been hyped out the wazoo for longer than I can remember so it’s not surprising that everyone wants to jump on the Cantina bandwagon to give their product some recognition. That includes ESPN, who has created sports all-star teams for baseball, basketball, soccer, […]
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Got me them Sidebar Update Blues, Them Sidebar Update Blues. Just ain’t got time to pick and choose, replace the old things with stuff that’s new. Some of those links, they’re dead and gone. Sometimes I get tired of carrying on. One of these days I know I’ll come around, but for now… I got […]
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Earlier this year I posted an entry about the relative intelligence of baseball fans when it comes to proper use of grammar, based on a report by Grammarly.com. According to the piece, Mets fans were the worst, with an average of 13.9 mistakes per 100 words; those who called the Cleveland Indians their own were […]
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Frank Sinatra would have turned 100 tomorrow. He had his fair share of baseball chops. He starred with Gene Kelly in the 1949 feature Take Me Out to the Ball Game in which he played second baseman Dennis Ryan of the famed “O’Brien to Ryan to Goldberg” ditty. Might not have been the greatest baseball […]
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It’s all well and good that the pace of games is picking up. According to Billy Witz in the Nov. 11 New York Times The pace of play rules that were instituted last season had an impact, shortening the average length of a game to 2 hours 56 minutes from 3:02, though [Major League Baseball’s […]
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I never got that. Without going into the popular history of friggatriskaidekaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th as opposed to triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number itself), isn’t 13 kind of a good number for the Jews? Bar mitzva and all? According to Baseball-Reference.com, there have been 299 players who wore the number 13 for part […]
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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
Throwback Thursday (aka, links dump), Dec. 17, 2015
December 17, 2015
Since I posted the first of these on a Thursday, which is known on social media as a time of reflection, I thought to make it a regular thing under this rubric. These are kind of fun; it’s like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get. (Actually, I never understood […]
Tagged as: baseball stadiums, Bill Veeck, cricket, Dock Ellis, New York Mets, New York Yankees
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