Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
“Norm” from Cheers passed away yesterday at the age of 76. Here’s his obit from The New York Times. Wendt, who was born in Chicago, was a hard-core White Sox fan, even if he did throw out a first pitch first-pitch came in a Rays jersey. He got to play some ball in the 1986 movie, […]
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Andrew Forbes is out with a new book: Field Work: On Baseball and Making a Living. If it’s anything like his last book, it will be quite thought-provoking. Another Bookshelf Conversation is in the offing. The New Yorker‘s “Sporting Scene” section takes up the issue of the Yankees’ new torpedo bats. Peter Drier offers this […]
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UPDATE: As of earlier this afternoon, the Pirates have decided restore Clemente’s sign. (Yiddish for “a shame.”) I try to keep politics out of the Bookshelf (I have another blog for that: The Worried Journalist), but with all this anti-DEI BS impacting baseball, I think it’s appropriate to address the situation. The Pittsburgh Pirates recently […]
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♦ Congratulations to Larry Gerlach, winner of this year’s Seymour Medal for Lion of the League: Bob Emslie and the Evolution of the Baseball Umpire. The Seymour medal is awarded by the Society for American Baseball Research for the best book of baseball history or biography published during the preceding calendar year. Gerlach is also […]
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Two men who spent most of their playing days with the Dodgers — the former in Brooklyn, the latter in LA — passed away recently. Tommy Brown is in the record books as the youngest position player in Major League history. During World War II, when many established players were in the military, youngsters like […]
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One of the true characters of the game, Bob Uecker, has died at the age of 90. Here’s his obituary by Richard Sandomir in The New York Times and an article from ESPN. As a reminder that you’re an ex-player much longer than a player, Uecker turned a poor playing career (.200, 14 homers, 74 […]
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Bob Veale, one of those hard-throwing, glasses-wearing pitchers who stirred fear in the hearts of batter, died January 3 at the age of 86. The six-foot-six lefty spent most of his 13-year career with the Pittsburgh Pirates before spending his last three seasons with the Boston Red Sox. Here’s his obituary by Andrew Destin in […]
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Still shocked that Rickey Henderson passed away at the age of 65, just a few days before his Christmas birthday. I always feel an extra pang of regret when someone younger than me dies. Henderson, was what many might call a colorful character. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009, accumulating 3,055 […]
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The irascible, cigar-smoking Cuban pitcher passed away yesterday (Oct. 8) at the age of 83. Here’s his obituary from The New York Times by Bruce Weber; the Boston Herald; and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Tiant enjoyed a spirited career, compiling a record of 229-172 over a 19-year career. He made his debut with the Cleveland […]
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It’s funny, isn’t it, the things that change our lives? Novelist Paul Auster, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 77, may have owed his career to baseball. From The Guardian: The author was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1947. According to Auster, his writing life began at the age of eight […]
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I look at the ages of these guys on Baseball-Reference and they’re all well into their 70s and 80s now. Where has the time gone? Jerry Grote, the backbone behind the plate for the Miracle Mets, passed away Sunday at the age of 81. Here’s his obituary by Richard Goldstein in The New York Times. […]
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Congrats to Larry Gerlach, Leslie Heaphy, and Sarah Langs, this year’s recipients of the Henry Chadwick Award given by the Society for American Baseball Research, “established to honor the game’s great researchers — historians, statisticians, annalists, and archivists — for their invaluable contributions to making baseball the game that links America’s present with its past.” […]
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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]
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It should come as no surprise that this year’s CASEY Award, presented by Spitball Magazine, goes to Joe Posnanski for his latest masterpiece, Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments. It almost seems unfair that such great work should come from the same writer in such quick succession. From the press release from […]
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What is this world coming to? It was bad enough when Sports Illustrated laid off many of the staff that made the magazine “illustrated” to begin with. I was bad enough when it went from a weekly to a bi-weekly to a monthly to just online. But now? “Sports Illustrated lays off most of its […]
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Because you can put your baseball cap on a shelf: From the ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION BEWILDERED BY ATHLEISURE AND BASEBALL CAPS DEAR MISS MANNERS: Returning to the United States after several years of living in Europe, I have noticed that “athleisure” wear is acceptable everywhere, and that wearing baseball hats in restaurants (done by people […]
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Be honest: How many of you out there had heard of Baseball United? I hadn’t until it popped up today in my Google search. According to the very well-produced BU website, “With a footprint of 2 billion people – 1 billion of whom are cricket fans – the Middle East and South Asia is the […]
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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
