Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
“Writing Baseball,” a multimedia exhibit based on the writings and collections Dr. Harvey Frommer, will be on display from June 17-July 31 at Dartmouth’s Baker-Berry Library. The exhibit will center on three themes: “Old Time Baseball,” “Red Sox vs. Yankees,” and “Breaking Baseball’s Color Line,” all of which will be evoked through Frommer’s writings, photographs, […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Catching up on Tom Hoffarth’s “30/30” feature: Day 12: The Victory Season: The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball’s Golden Age, by Robert Weintraub Day 13: Smoky Joe Wood: The Biography of a Baseball Legend, by Gerald C. Wood Day 14: Keepers Of The Game: When The Baseball Beat was the […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Only a Game featured Filip Bondy on it’s most recent show on which he discussed his new book, Who’s on Worst?: The Lousiest Players, Biggest Cheaters, Saddest Goats and Other Antiheroes in Baseball History. You can listen to the segment here. It was on that show I discovered OAG host Bill Littlefield had interviewed W.P. […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Literary birthday greeting: 1949 – Jules Tygiel, author Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy Past Time: Baseball As History Jackie Robinson and His Legacy Extra Bases – Reflections on Jackie Robinson, Race, & Baseball History Also on this date: 1981 – The Chicago White Sox sign prized free agent catcher Carlton Fisk. The […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The Hall of Fame manager of the Baltimore Orioles during their greatest years, died Saturday while on a fantasy cruise sponsored by the team. he was 82. It’s kind of sad that he passed away the same day as Stan Musial; he should have received a day all of his own for people to pay […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
There must be something in that. Came across two in the last couple of days. Just like many web-presences, many of these things are hit-or-miss (swung on and missed?), here today gone later today. Some, like this one, are merely suggestions by writers/bloggers with none of the back-and-forth discussion of a real BC. The Baseball […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
One of my favorite podcasts is NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, the topics on which are pretty self-explanatory. Last week’s episode took up the issue of “stuff.” It’s amazing the things we keep that have no value — earthly or un- — to anyone, including the owner. Does anyone still need a college paper written […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
This wait is killing me. Not much to do until the publisher — who is enjoying a well-deserved holiday — returns and starts arranging interviews and sends out review copies, etc. So I’ve been ordering new business cards, post cards, and very “limited-edition” 501 merch, more as souvenirs for the family than any kind of […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
♦ More on Jeff Kent’s Survivor experience from The Wall Street Journal. I don’t get it: he thinks it should be harder, yet he was “kicked off the island.” Does that mean he didn’t try harder b3ecause it wasn’t challenging enough? ♦ Mets pitcher and memoirist R.A. Dickey was named recipient of the Branch Rickey […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Don’t hate Nate Silver because he’s beautiful accurate. With his baseball background, it’s easy to compare his philosophies/theories to the iconoclastic Billy Beane in Michael Lewis’ Moneyball as Carl Bialik does in The Wall Street Journal. Even our neighbors to the north wrote about Silver.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Say it ain’t so, Ozzie. According to this item on ESPN.com, the Hall of Fame shortstop “is selling his 13 Gold Gloves, 11 of his All-Star Game rings and more than 100 pieces of memorabilia from his personal collection in a November on-line auction.” Also offering stuff at auction: Curt Shilling, but for, sadly, different […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Sent the manuscript off to the copy-editor this morning. Whee! Now I can relax for a couple of weeks. I’ll most likely have to have a long chat with him when he can’t read my handwriting. Then I image I get galleys or page proofs back so I can create the index. That should be […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Maybe it’s just the sports new cycles, but it seems there was a lot of emphasis on how young many of this year’s All-Stars were, juxtaposed with Chipper Jones, who is probably making his last appearance in the summer classic. (Did anyone else think his locker room “pep talk” was uncomfortable and stagey?) It occurred […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The veteran actor passed away Friday at the age of 81. Among his hundreds of other roles, Gazzara portrayed Yogi Berra in a one-man play, Nobody Don’t Like Yogi. You can read the script here, thanks to Google Books.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
You don’t see it as much these days, but prior to the early 1970s, most baseball card pictures were posed in ersatz action. The players often went capless, just in case there were traded before the card was released. Along my regular investigatory ramblings, I’ve come across a few sites that look into a card’s […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m frequently surprised by the interest non-baseball authors show in the national pastime. Case in point: the poet and children’s book author, who published this piece in Playboy back in 1962. According to the South Side Sox blog, In a June, 1962 four-page spread for the mentioned magazine, Shel […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
How can they call themselves a library when their entire catalog of baseball titles consists of 11 books?
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Just received W.P. Kinsella’s new book — his first in 13 years — Butterfly Winter. Greatly looking forward to it after I finish re-reading Thomas Dyja’s Play for a Kingdom.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Spent a few pleasant hours at the Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls last Saturday. Ostensibly it was for a book sale. Turns out, mine were the only ones for sale that day. It was nice catching up with Dave “No Relation” Kaplan, executive director of the Museum and co-author of several Berra books and […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
is available on Amazon.com,
In my most recent "day job," I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted another blog. Busy, busy, busy.
I did a profile piece on the award-winning cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
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
