Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Games are shorter by a good chunk, thanks to the speed-up rules now in place. MLB thinks that’s a good thing, but who are they trying to convince? “Real” baseball fans, IMO, don’t care about the length of the games. The longer the better (unless the weather is crappy). That’s what separates baseball from other […]
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Now that my commute to work takes barely 15 minutes, I don’t have much time to listen to podcasts (my previous gig was almost 45 minutes away; plenty of time to get through a whole program). But even if I did, it seems there is a decided lack of interviews with baseball book authors these […]
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The late sports radio pioneer Graham McNamee has been named the recipient of the 2016 Ford Frick award for excellence in broadcasting. From the Hall of Fame press release: Graham McNamee, whose national play-by-play of the World Series in the earliest days of radio transformed the one-time opera singer into a household name, has been […]
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It’s a shame that Derek Jeter’s final days as a Yankee have to be enmeshed in this “debate” over his place in team and MLB history. When I first heard about Keith Olbermann’s “Jeter smackdown,” I thought, “there Keith goes again, trying to show he’s the smartest guy in the room.” But after listening to […]
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I’m reading The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams for an upcoming review on Bookreporter.com. When I received the galleys, my first thought was similar to Rob Neyer’s, who noted in this post, “Hey, there’s another book about Ted Williams.” (Excerpt here. By the way, although I understand the title, it’s too similar to […]
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Note: This entry is a combination of the official press release sent by the Hall of Fame and my comments/edits. With the release of Legendary Entertainment’s landmark film 42 this spring, the worlds of movies and baseball came together for fans across the globe. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will recognize the […]
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This can be either endlessly amusing or incredibly frustrating: commercials read by radio broadcasters during games, as per Bob Greene in this CNN piece (with commentary by this piece from RadioLink.com. In sports, everything seems to be “brought to you by…” and some business is the “official (fill-in-the-blank) of the (team)…” One spot for the […]
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Curt Smith and Scott Pitoniak will launch a new weekly baseball radio show — A Talk in the Park — on WYSL 92.1 FM and 1040 AM, on Saturday, Jan. 12, at noon, The 60-minute series will be available outside of Western New York via the Internet on wysl1040.com. Pitoniak, left, recipient of more than […]
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A day late, but with all due respect to Scully, who turned 84 yesterday. Curt Smith, the go-to writer on the history of baseball broadcasting, published Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story in 2009.
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Join me tonight at 9 p.m. EST when I make my weekly appearance on the What’s On Second Internet radio program. (Actually, I’ll be on closer to 9:40.) This week we’ll be discussing annual baseball magazines and whether they’ve gone the way of the dodo.
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If you’re not otherwise busy watching Gossip Girls or some such nonsense, I will be guesting on What’s On Second: The Seamhead.com Radio Hour (not to be confused with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour… or is it? Hmmm.) Anyway, the festivities begin at 9 p.m. and I’m slated to go on at 9:15 p.m. EST […]
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by Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, with Andrew Chaikivsky. ESPN Books, 2010 A caveat and a confession: While “hate” may be too strong a word, I “intensely dislike” sports-talk radio. The idea of (supposedly) grown men and women getting apoplectic on the air over Oliver Perez or Ron Artest or Bill Belichick, et al…not my […]
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“Olney make believe…” Sorry, I can never keep that name straight. The natural tendency is to dyslex it into “only.” ESPN baseball writer/broadcaster Buster Olney was the guest on the latest Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me‘s “Not My Job” segment. I felt kind of badly for him. There was zero response to Peter Sagal’s introduction. […]
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Since you can keep a newspaper on your bookshelf, I suppose I could do this on a daily basis. Hmm. April Fool. There are plenty of other blogs that can take care of that. What? Man, I gotta get rid of these Page-a-Day calendars. I’m just too disorganized. First of all, just wanted to let […]
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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
Shameless self-promotion
February 21, 2011
Tonight I’ll be making my regular guest appearance on What’s On Second on Blogtalk radio at 9 EST. I’ll be on around 9:40 to discuss spring training books.
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