Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
With all due respect and this is a fascinating, if sad, story, but how else to explain this story about the murder of ex-Pittsburgh Pirate infielder Sammy Khalifa’s father and the psychic toll it took on the ballplayer over the years that starts on the first sports page then jumps to a full-page continuation? Rob […]
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Every Christmas you can count on a couple of celebrities to cast off this mortal coil. This time, sadly, it’s two of my favorite actors, Jack Klugman obit by Bruce Weber) and Charles Durning. One of Klugman’s signature roles was, of course, the sloppy sportswriter Oscar Madison in beloved TV series The Odd Couple, for […]
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What a shame. The former Cincinnati Reds pitcher was just 55. Pastore, who pitched the final year of his eight-year career with the Minnesota Twins, died on Monday from injuries sustained last month in a motorcycle accident. Following his retirement from baseball at the age of 28, Pastore became a popular Christian radio personality.
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Today’s newspapers are rife with news about the passing of Marvin Miller, who died yesterday at the age of 95. The pieces fall mostly into three general categories: straight-ahead obituaries, op-ed pieces discussing his importance to the sports world, and items on Miller’s continued snub for induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame, as exemplified in […]
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Either he’s hurting for money or has a real hankering to show he’s a renaissance man. Whatever the reason, look for The Nolan Ryan Beef Cookbook at a bookstore near you — in May 2014. I have no idea why the publisher Little, Brown and Company chose to make the announcement so early, but there […]
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There’s no off-season anymore. As soon as one is done, it’s time to plan for the next. This probably isn’t anything new, but it sure gets more attention, thanks to 24/7 cable sports networks and the Internet. Jonathan Eig, author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story […]
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♦ I’m including this piece just because I find it amusing. I hope the Brits don’t get all their baseball info like this. ♦ Who says fiction about the national pastime has to be confined to literature? Here’s a case of fictitious baseball merchandise. ♦ Dan Epstein, author of Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A […]
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Ok, hurication is over. Time to get back to some semblance of normalcy. I hope y’all are okay out there. We came out unscathed save for a couple of days without power; presently we have no cable/Internet service, but no complaints given what so many others are going through. Before the power went out we […]
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As per pundit tracker, here’s a list of how baseball writers and pundits “scored” in their predictions.
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Anyone who’s read my blogs for awhile knows I’m all about the veterans. So it was especially please to have them honored before last night’s World Series game. The triple-amputee Marine acquitted himself most nobly in throwing out the first pitch (about the 7:30 mark).
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(Kids, ask your grandparents…) So I’m watching the game last night and Detroit reliever Al Albuquerque is pitching to San Francisco first baseman Brandon Belt. So I got to wondering: how often to batters and pitchers with alliterative names face each other? I just did a quick look at Baseball Reference and discovered there are […]
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Will Leitch published this piece on the reluctance of some sports pundits (as opposed to the hoi poloi of fandom) who are reluctant to embrace the new generation of baseball statistics. Of course this is the time of year when segments of the media that doesn’t normally cover baseball starts up as if they invented […]
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even if the games are never played. And even if they’re just paper printouts rather than traditional tickets. I don’t know why I expect pro sports businesses to “do the right thing.” It usually turns out to the bad. I guess I’m just too naive. My daughter decided at the last minute to go Game […]
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There’s a saying in baseball that each game give you the opportunity to see something you’ve never seen before. This, courtesy of Michael Morse and the Washington Nationals, tops my list. How many of us as kids have pantomimed a grand-slam swing?
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The Oakland As pitcher was hit in the head by a line drive off the bat of Los Angeles Angels Erick Aybar in yesterday’s game. Although McCarthy walked off the mound under his own power after several minutes sitting on the mound, he later had emergency brain surgery to repair a brain contusion, bleeding, and […]
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“Clemens Headed Back to Baseball—at 50“
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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
