Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
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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my baseball cap collection? (Sorry, Little Caesar fans; and if you think I’m talking about the pizza franchise, shame on you, you Philistine). I have a very modest collection of baseball caps — perhaps 25 or so — from major and minor league teams. One of the reasons it’s so small is my rule: I […]
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On our first day of our trip to the Berkshires, my wife and I ventured into Lee for dinner. We found an antiques store where I chanced upon this little item. At $85, it was one of the more pricey things in the shop, where it remained as of our leaving. *** Later in the […]
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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 […]
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The latest scourge upon us: Roving library gangs! A war of words.
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A few months back I made a major decision: it’s time to cull the herd of baseball books. Majorly. I used to keep track on Library Thing. You can browse my collection via a link on the sidebar —–>. But I haven’t kept it up over the past two or three years. There was just […]
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But I don’t know how to classify this bit of uber-trivia from Numbers Don’t Lie: Mets: The Biggest Numbers in Mets History, by Ross Cohen with Adam Raider. The chapter for “10” features Tom Seaver’s 10 consecutive strikeouts against the visiting San Diego Padres on April 22, 1970 and comes with this fun fact: Seaver […]
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I gotta get back to Weight Watchers. Between injuries and ennui, my exercise habits have fallen to crap while my food intake has increased (depressed eating I believe is the popular term). I found I did pretty well when I had to keep track of what I was consuming via that support system. So, kids, […]
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Received several e-mails in response to the theme behind my “review” a couple of weeks ago on the Kevin Costner vehicle For Love of the Game. They were close, but they wouldn’t pass muster on my favorite show Jeopardy, so …, The correct answer: What is the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles […]
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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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Any parent knows your kid will have this one TV show you absolutely cannot stand, be it Barney or in my situation, Full House. My daughter is now a college graduate and we were recently near a movie theater that was screening The Man from UNCLE. Now, I remember the original series from the mid-1960s, […]
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Today marks the 20th anniversary of the passing of Mickey Mantle. And while he didn’t die from lung cancer, he and many of his fellow athletes — role models — didn’t mind picking up a few extra bucks shilling for the tobacco industry. One of the reason’s the Honus Wagner T-206 is so rare is […]
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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 […]
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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
Can I haz baseball gramerburger (redux)?
December 15, 2015
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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