Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Well, perhaps not this camera, but a camera. While they are no doubt indispensable when examining close plays, there something about super slow-motion I’ve always found amusing. Perhaps it’s the ability to humble any athlete by presenting an unflattering picture. Anyway, technology always fascinates me. Although I’m not a fan of the cameraperson who runs […]
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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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From the Baseball Reliquary: The Baseball Reliquary’s next program will be a rare screening of “0 for 37,” a television drama broadcast live and recorded via kinescope in 1953 (59 years ago!) on the Philco Television Playhouse (press release and flyer attached). The program will be on Thursday, September 27 at 7:00 p.m. at the […]
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A run scoring on a throw back from the catcher to the pitcher? Really?
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If this doesn’t bring a lump to your throat, then you have no soul. Either scripts and active content are not permitted to run or Adobe Flash Player version10.0.0 or greater is not installed.
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A recent episode of Suits had as its “B” plot a defamation suit between an ESPN-type broadcaster and the baseball player he accused of using steroids. As with most of the episode of this intriguing show, “Asterisk” has a primary plot that shares a connection. One of the weaselly characters is put up for a […]
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Former MLB second baseman Jeff Kent will be one of the contestants on the new season of Survivor, which begins Spet. 19. I still won’t watch this show.
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Another sports magazine show? Well, when you carry the SI imprimatur, people will pay attention. The monthly offering premieres tonight on the NBC Sports Network. One of the four segments: The Bundy Project: The development of prized Baltimore Orioles pitching prospect Dylan Bundy is quite extraordinary. He squats 500 lbs. throws a 100-mph fastball, drinks […]
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Saw the first episode of Showtime’s The Franchise last night. Not much to say, really. The focus was Ozzie Guillen (who was suspended early on for his remarks about Fidel Castro), closer Heath Bell’s woes, and the team’s overall ups and downs over the first three months of the season. (Warning: the program contains lots […]
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“Dial”: the means by which previous generations selected their TV and/or radio programs. Precedes “remote control” and buttons. For your viewing pleasure, now and in the future: * You have to wonder whether teams may regret allowing TV entities to shadow them for a season. It’s almost like the Sports Illustrated cover curse. This time, […]
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Davidson, a defensive end for the rough and tumble Oakland Raiders in the 1960s, passed away Monday at the age of 72. So what does the hulking football player have to do with baseball you ask? Well, after he left the game, he turned to acting (not unlike Merlin Olsen and Alex Karas). He appeared […]
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I’ve been informed that Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story will be aired on Long Island’s WLIW tonight at 10 p.m. Particularly appropriate in light of the story about the “Judaism & Baseball Retreat” I just posted, since several of the presenters — including Rabbis Rebecca Alpert and Michael Paley, Martin Abramowitz, and Ira […]
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One of America’s best loved TV characters died today at the age of 86. This is why you never want to be the umpire: But what a great look back on small town youth baseball.
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I was tooling around the Internet recently and came across an item about Joe Garagiola, the former catcher who enjoyed a second act as author of the well-received Baseball Is a Funny Game. (More recently, Garagiola wrote It’s Anybody’s Ballgame and, most recently, Just Play Ball. What I also learned was that Jolly Joe was […]
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Here’s something you don’t see every day. Or ever. Are you paying attention, Zack Hample?
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This screen cap comes from the trailer for Revolution, a new NBC science fiction program coming this fall. The show is set 15 years into the future, when electrical power has disappeared all over the planet. With the Cubs’ luck, they were probably leading in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World […]
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These programs are supposed to take you “deep inside” the organization’s but I watched the Giants version last year. Meh. Kudos to the team for giving such access. The Guillen suspension for his Castro remarks are already there. HBO couldn’t have known ahead of time how that drama would play out. (Although the cynic in […]
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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
Bits and pieces
August 30, 2012
Time for the occasional declutter of the accumulated links and stories, so here goes. “Dan Barry’s Bottom of the 33rd has won the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, which honors a nonfiction book on the subject of sports.” More here. From the Yogi Berra Museum: Former Yankee star second baseman Bobby Richardson, a cornerstone […]
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