Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
The Hall of Fame pitcher passed away today at the age of 83. Roberts was still in the majors when I was coming to the game. I can picture one his last baseball cards in my mind (and here on the page). One of the things I always admired about him — especially in this […]
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The Hall of Fame broadcaster died today at the age of 92.
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Great. Something else for Mets and Yankees fans to argue about. Now you can sing along. And I couldn’t help but add this one. A song about the Washington Nationals? How retro.
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Hitting home runs and pitching no hitters are great, but they pale in comparison to what former big leaguer and current Tampa Bay Rays broadcaster Kevin Kennedy accomplished with some fellow passengers on a recent flight. According to an item in The New York Times punlished April 23, “…Kennedy, the former major league manager now […]
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This article appeared in the April 15 edition of the New Jersey Jewish News. Tempered with the excitement of Opening Day, some baseball fans have to contend with the end of a tradition, even if it was only a few years old: 2010 marks the final release of the Jewish Major Leaguer card set. According […]
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Here’s an idea: Don’t play games in such lousy weather.
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Of course, in my case, it’s more a math thing than science.
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Hey, I totally commiserate. I am the world’s worst speller, as any follower of The Bookshelf must have learned by now. So have some compassion for these guys. To say nothing of all the player’s names misspelled over the years. You try spelling Kluszewski! This falls under the aegis of Uniwatchblog.com, so here’s their take […]
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From today’s NY Times: “A Piece of Mets History, Rewritten in Stone” Doesn’t anyone look at these things? Leave This Blank:Leave This Blank Too:Do Not Change This:Your email:
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It’s been way to long since a “serious” biography about Willie Mays was published. That’s about to be remedied with Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend by James S. Hirsch, to be published this month by Scribner. Bruce Weber, author of As They See’ Em, wrote this piece for the Sunday Times. Perhaps it’s because […]
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How often was his seminal novel of youth struggling for identity and acceptance mistaken for a baseball story? Maybe that’s because of former major league catcher — and later TV personality and broadcaster — Bob Uecker’s homonymic book. (Quick aside: In the mid-90s, I worked part time for one of those statistical companies that track […]
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Actually I have a neat little hat rack for most of my baseball caps, but it is lying on top of a bookcase, so I’m gonna count it. When a Hall of Famer plays for a few teams over his career, there’s always hand-wringing over what hat his plaque will bear. Several years ago, there […]
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The baseball lifer — and one of my earliest recollections of my baseball card collection — died on Thursday at the age of 92. From the Dallas Morning News. And Randy Galloway contributed this appreciation in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. Bragan published his memoirs (right) in 1992.
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This TV news piece from FOX asks the scientific question: How does an outfielder catch a fly ball? The three main theories: 1. Trajectory prediction. The fielder perceives the initial conditions of the ball’s motion and compute its trajectory to predict where it will land. 2. Linear acceleration cancellation. The fielder runs so as to […]
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Or perhaps “Youk Ought to Be in Pictures,” (with apologies to Dana Suesse and Edward Heyman). Anyway, this item comes from Boston.com: Youk on screen He plays first base, he plays third base, and he also acts. All-purpose All-Star Kevin Youkilis is on his way to New York to shoot a scene for the indie […]
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Was anyone else bothered by this story on Johnny Damon in today’s New York Times? Damon, one of the heroes of the 2009 World Series, is currently unemployed. A free agent, the Yankees have displayed little interest in resigning him and at the moment, there are no other takers as teams have filled their high-profile […]
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From Len Berman’s That’s Sports site: Having worked in the news business, I’ve seen how it works. A big story breaks. It gets covered, and then the media moves on. Haiti doesn’t and shouldn’t work that way. Word comes that at least 30 members of Haiti’s soccer federation, players, refs, coaches and other officials, perished […]
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Our favorite game show host, Peter Sagal, included the recent shocking news about Mark McGwire on the latest episode of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. In the “Who’s Carl This Time” feature, sidekick Carl Kassel offered the quote: “I used very very low dosages. There was no way I wanted to look like Lou Ferrigno […]
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Congratulations to Larry Tye. His biography on Satchel Paige won a spot on The New York Times list of the year’s “notable books.” It’s the only baseball title on this exclusive roster, though not the only sports book. Tye’s critically-acclaimed offering is joined by Andre Agassi’s Open.
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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
* Asterisk th*s
January 24, 2010
There’s been a lot of talk about what to do with the statistics from the Steroids Era. Some want them expunged from the record books. Others, like Tony Kornheiser, want a special note on any Hall of Fame plaque, bringing into account the possibility (probability?) that said honored player partook of PED. My take is: […]
Tagged as: PED, statistics, steroids
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