Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
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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Years ago I wrote a piece for E, The Environmental Magazine about how some Major League teams were getting on the “green” wagon, recycling, cutting back on water usage, etc. I kept hoping to return to the topic, but this piece by Elliott Negin, Director of News & Commentary, Union of Concerned Scientists, on the […]
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(Because you can put your baseball bracelets on a bookshelf.) R.A. Dickey, the best player on the NY Mets right now and one of the best pitchers in the Majors, might be forgiven for losing a bit of concentration in yesterday’s 6-1 loss to the Cincinnati Reds. In an age where ballplayers wear their uniform […]
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Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan recently announced a new joint venture. Shortly after the Boston Red Sox won their first Word Championship since 1918, King and O’Nan published Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season, which was basically a series of back-and-forth emails. This time it’s a fiction eBook, A […]
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The New York Times ran a couple of interesting pieces in the July 8 issue. (Yeah, I know I’m late, so sue me.) * Tyler Kepner wrote, “The 83F project: Sign here, please,” about one man’s attempt to have his entire 1983 Fleer card set signed by the subjects, all 660 of them. he’s 99 […]
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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
