Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message. On with the show… Here are the top ten baseball books as […]
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Because you can put all this Derek Jeter memorabilia on your bookshelf… Yesterday I came across this piece on ESPN: “Yankees to wear Derek Jeter patch.” There was a lot of social media chatter about the appropriateness of this gesture. Sports fans debated whether an active player should be honored like this. Such tributes usually […]
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It must be a bittersweet time for Derek Jeter. On the one hand, he knows his “expiration date.” On the other hand, he knows his expiration date. How many fictional scenarios contain the premise of knowing when one will draw his last breath? Of course, retiring as an athlete isn’t the same as retiring permanently […]
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don’t know where, don’t know when… Taking off tomorrow for a little vacation. Not sure of the accessibility/availability issues, so trying to squeeze in a few so my mailbox won’t be so full when I get back. There have been at least a couple of baseball mysteries with the title Strike Three, You’re Dead, one […]
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Made one of my occasional visits to Amazon for the purpose of seeing what new and exciting baseball titles or coming in the next several months. Here’s a sampling of some, excluding, as usual — although with one major exception — books for younger readers. In nor particular order… * Baseball Explained. Phillip Mahoney, McFarland, […]
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One of my favorite features in the old Street & Smith annuals was the list of statistical targets (The Sporting News now has that burden/honor). The contemporary players were listed along with the all-timers for major categories such as home runs, RBI, wins, strikeouts, etc. But many of those milestones don’t seem like that much […]
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I picked up second “annual” of the year. Gotta say, how about a little imagination, guys? It’s pretty lazy (and artistically lame), to fall back on featuring Derek Jeter and David Wright on the New York regional edition, especially in consecutive years. Just sayin’.
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There’s always a major thing going on while I’m on vacation that I don’t hear about until I get back. In this case it was the “announcement” that Derek Jeter might enter the publishing world when he retires from his playing career. According to a piece in the Nov. 14 NY Times, “Jeter, the Yankees’ […]
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I will always have a soft spot for Mental Floss, the publication that assigned me my first cover story (which you can read here from a very early attempt at a website. I’m amazed it’s still available.) So here’s their latest baseball quiz, with Jeter as the focus. I missed four of the 11 players […]
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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 […]
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The first two nights of the trip we spent in Newton with a vet-school friend of Faith’s. (By the way of you want a good veggie restaurant in the area, try the Red Lentil in Watertown.) We moved into our hotel on Saturday and just lazed. Sunday we were supposed visit the Museum of Fine […]
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Greg Spira passed along this link to an NJ.com review of five New York-centric books, including (with a “symbolic” thumbs up-thumbs down): 1961: The Inside Story of the Maris-Mantle Home Run Chase, by Phil Pepe (-) Donnie Baseball: The Definitive Biography of Don Mattingly, by Mike Shalin (-) Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The […]
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Who better than a fellow athlete to appreciate what it takes to make it to a milestone? Doug Glanville, author of The Game from Where I Stand: A Ballplayer’s Inside View, wrote this piece for The New York Times.
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As of this writing, Derek Jeter stands just four hits away from the magical 3,000. ESPN is working on Derek Jeter 3K, a “documentary” “Set to Air Just Weeks After 3,000th Hit,” according to a press release. Can the souvenir t-shirts, caps, etc. be far behind? The name seems like a natural for a video […]
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Michael Sokolove has cover story honors for the Sunday Magazine, which looks at Derek Jeter as the poster boy for aging athletes — and not necessarily in a good way. Man, I wish I could be 37 again. I wish I could remember 37 again. In a related note, here’s a look at the “decline” […]
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The SI curse returns? Maybe it’s a reformed curse, since Derek Jeter wasn’t actually on the cover, but Tom Verducci’s article starts, “Three Grand,” off “Sometime in the next week Derek Jeter could become the third-youngest player, and the first Yankee, to reach 3,000 hits. The road to that milestone was a simple one—until it […]
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Richard Sandomir, who covers sports media for The New York Times, has this on Ian O’Connor’s latest appearing in this week’s Sunday Book Review section. Upshots: “O’Connor rarely elevates his material beyond a narrative about Jeter’s greatness as a man and player. A straightforward storyteller, he gods up his subject without irony, detachment or recognition […]
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The Journey of Derek Jeter, by Ian O’Connor. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011 (Note: This review was published on Bookreporter.com on May 20.) You wouldn’t think Derek Jeter would be the cause of any headaches for the New York Yankees. An 11-time All-Star, 1996 American League Rookie of the Year, presumptive first-round Hall of Famer. A […]
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Been meaning to post about this for a couple of days. Don’t know what kind of pickup this story has been getting outside the New York area, but hearts were all aflutter on Saturday because Yankees long-time catcher Jorge Posada — batting .165 and hitting in the number nine spot in the lineup against the […]
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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
Baseball best-sellers, Aug. 29
August 29, 2014
Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message. On with the show… Here are the top ten baseball books as […]
Tagged as: Baseball instruction, Bernard Malamud, Chicago Cubs, Derek Jeter, George F. Will, Mariano Rivera, Moneyball, New York Yankees, Oakland As, Ted Williams, The Natural, Wrigley Field
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