Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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It’s almost inconceivable to me to think that we are coming on the 40th anniversary of the death of Roberto Clemente. That’s an entire generation ago and makes me feel much older than I am. Kevin Guilfoile took some time out fro his carer as a novelist to write A Drive into the Gap, a […]
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(Kids, ask your parents/grandparents.) One of my pre-season amusements is to purchase baseball magazines and study their predictions, especially for who will get to the post-season. Somewhere on my other blog is an analysis of how they’ve done in seasons past. This year PunditTracker has done the work for me. The San Francisco Giants get […]
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The annual baseball preview issues are here. We look forward to these every years, especially with the dearth of “real baseball” (as opposed to fantasy) magazines available this year. Before the days of the Internet, you took what you could get and appreciated it, even if the information was “old” by the time you read […]
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(Even before Vin Scully was broadcasting.) I came across this piece— “The History of How We Follow Baseball” — by Phillip Bump in The Atlantic while preparing the previous entry on the Eephus League scorebooks. It’s a fascinating look at the technology of bringing the game to fans prior to the mass availability of radio […]
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The NY Times‘ George Vecsey wrote this piece focusing on Stan Musial and basketball’s Bill Russell as among the latest group of recipients for America’s highest civilian honor. Isn’t it kind of funny: no matter how much of a big shot they are — they could be President of the United States or a billionaire […]
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My daughter was playing in her school’s band at last night’s Texas-Illinois game at MSG, the night-cap of the Coaches Against Cancer tournament. While I was waiting for her to come home (the game went into overtime and the kids didn’t return until about 1:30 a.m.), I was flipping through the dial and found this […]
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“ESPN Breaks Up Sunday Night Baseball Team Of Jon Miller And Joe Morgan” I know a lot of people had problems Morgan, citing his monotonous prattle and over-analysis, but frankly, I don’t care who the announcers are. In fact, call me perverse, but I find the more they annoy, the more enjoyable the game. In […]
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Richard Sandomir of The New York Times reports on the generally disappointing documentary on the late Yankees owner, part of ESPN’s “30 for 30” series. Upshot: Documentaries soar when they reveal something new and send viewers on new paths. From the start of “One Night in Vegas,” the ESPN “30 for 30” film that had […]
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Haven’t seen too many of ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series, but happened on this one while flipping through the dial. Jordan Rides the Bus is a nifty piece by Ron (Bull Durham) Shelton that takes a studied look at Michael’s days as member of the Birmingham Barons, a minor team in the Chicago White […]
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by Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, with Andrew Chaikivsky. ESPN Books, 2010 A caveat and a confession: While “hate” may be too strong a word, I “intensely dislike” sports-talk radio. The idea of (supposedly) grown men and women getting apoplectic on the air over Oliver Perez or Ron Artest or Bill Belichick, et al…not my […]
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The curent issue of ESPN The Magazine features a survey of 100 MLB players on sundry issues. Here are some of the more unusual questions and results, if you believe them. (Come one, don’t you think a few of the questionees are just playin’?) The city with the best baseball groupies: Chicago How many games […]
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For those looking for more info about the ZiPS system, here are a couple of links. The first goes to the BaseballThinkFactory, where it originated/ The second leads to “The Max Info” on ESPN.com, written by Dan Szymborski, EIC of BTF. Note on the latter: you maybe have to be a Insider (additional subscription) to […]
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It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Since the whole baseball card scenario has changed since I was a kid, I now look forward to the baseball preview issues from ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated as harbingers of the impending season. ESPN arrived yesterday, and quite frankly, it’s a bit disappointing. In the […]
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“But the most amazing thing of all: I get paid for doing this” (the closing lines for one of the comedian’s songs during his heyday in the late 1970s). I bring it up because, once again, it goes to the folly of using sports pundits as a source of reliable information. At least when it […]
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One of the things I like about this time of year is that the media comes out with its lest: the top ten, the best, the worst, etc. Jayson Stark of ESPN.com provided this list of the wildy and wacky world of baseball in 2008, including: A batter hitting a homer but not scoring the […]
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Technically, this doesn’t belong here (although you can keep a laptop on a bookshelf), but it’s an important resource so, from The New York Times, this announcement about the reorganization of ESPN.com. The problem with several major news outlets, including the Times and Sports Illustrated, is that the designers try to cram too much info […]
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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 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
Let’s take a breath, people (Matt Kemp)
April 17, 2012 · 2 comments
Matt Kemp has had a wonderful start: Six home runs in the Dodgers’ first 10 games, as well as 16 RBIs, and a BA/OBP/SLG line of .487/.523/1.026. But someone has to be a bit more ambitious, or at least less lazy. ESPN projects a player’s end-of-season/162 game stats based purely on what he has […]
Tagged as: ESPN, Matt Kemp, Ryan Braun
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