Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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♦ From the Tulsa World, this on on Robert Fitts’ Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan. Upshot: “It is very well-researched and a balanced account, but it occasionally threatens to sag under the weight of such details. Readers need not be fans of baseball to appreciate the sport […]
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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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That’s what it’s coming to these days. Topps is undoubtedly looking for a new audience, according to these recent pieces in The New York Times and Time magazine (both of which use the same photo to illustrate the story). According to the Time story, [T]oday, as Angry Birds and iPads beckon, the baseball card has […]
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Another story about the death of the baseball card industry, via CBS News Sunday Morning. The segment features Dave Jamieson, author of Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession. (Click here for the Bookshelf interview with Jamieson.) Back in the day, before they became part of an investment portfolio, kids used to stick […]
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Via Bruce Markusen at The Hardball Times.
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For those collectors out there, or anyone interested in the “backstory” of things, this is on the MLB Network tonight at 10 eastern/7 Pacific.
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Today we mark the birth of the late Lou Limmer. I don’t eBay often, but when I do it’s usually for some bit of Jewish sports memorabilia. Like this Limmer card from the 1955 Topps set. Colorful, ain’t it? I had the pleasure of interviewing Limmer shortly before he passed.
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As the days dwindle down to a precious few, here’s an attempt at a major catch-up: I met Rob Fitts at the SABR convention in Washington, DC, last year. His specialty is Japanese baseball. Here’s his site on baseball cards. The NY Times‘ Alan Schwarz covered the convention’s always-entertaining trivia contest. You know the theoretical […]
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While on vacation, we stopped at the Vermont Country Store in Weston. It’s a very cool place, especially of you’re a boomer. They have all manner of nostalgia for sale, including Colorforms, GI Joe, Slinky, and Spalding balls, just to name a few. For $1.50, my wife bought a pack of 1988 Topps cards, which […]
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In today’s installment, the missing words are “Baseball cards,” as discussed in this piece from the Sports Illustrated website on Josh Wilker’s book Cardboard Gods, as per Ted Anthony, who writes about American culture for the Associated Press: baseball-card blogger and memoirist Josh Wilker has come through. The unforgettable “Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told […]
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No, not the St. Louis “Redbirds,” but the little pieces of cardboard from our youth (which for some is farther in the past than others). The Bookshelf has previously posted about Josh Wilker’s Cardboard Gods and David Jamieson’s Mint Condition. Here’s some more food for thought. The Baseball Hall of Fame is currently featuring a […]
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The Boston Globe has been active on the baseball review front of late. Bill Nowlin, author of several titles on the Red Sox, contributed this piece on Howard Bryant’s bio of Hank Aaron for today’s edition. Yesterday, Bill Littlefield, host of NPR’s Only a Game, considered two baseball titles — Cardboard Gods by Josh Wilker […]
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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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That seems to be theme in most of these Daily News “baseball cards” shots of the Mets and Yankees. In another marketing ploy, the Daily News will be publishing its baseball preview on Thursday, rather than the usual Sunday before Opening Day. I’m guessing they realize people buy the Sunday paper regardless of content, but […]
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My apologies for falling way behind. Still basking in my post-Yankee fantasy camp experience, which you will be able to read about in the pages of the New Jersey Jewish News in the next week or so, as well as Broadside Bombers next year. So without further ado: Ron Shandler, who publishes the popular Baseball […]
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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
* Bookshelf author interview: Josh Wilker
March 26, 2010
Josh Wilker launched his blog, CardboardGods (Motto: “Voice of the mathematically eliminated”) as a link to a simpler time, when all a boy needed to be happy was a nickle, a dime, or at most a quarter, to buy a pack of baseball cards. For a ten-year-old, these guys were, in fact, gods. All you […]
Tagged as: Baseball Cards, Cardboard Gods, Josh Wilker
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