Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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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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How hot are the Indians? (And why don’t more fans care?) MLB Poll: Who’s the nicest player in baseball? That’s all, folks.
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Willie Mays turns 80 today. Wow. Somewhere in my stacks I have some yellowing magazines from the mid-60s that still compared Mays to Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider having been out of the picture for a couple of seasons. Mays appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated nine times (six as an active player). So much […]
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Watch out, Starlin Castro! The Cubs shortstop gets the dreaded cover treatment in the May 9 issue, written by Albert Chen, with a little something extra by Joe Sheehan. In addition An SI poll names Shin-Soo Choo as MLB’s most under-rated player. Sheehan also writes about the Twins’ recent woes. UPDATE: Chen is the subject […]
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Yay! The April 4 issues of Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine finally gets down to bidness! Cover Cover price $5.99 $4.99 Can I read it on-line (no smartphone apps or iPads gizmos)? Yes, but without the images. Only if you’re an ESPN “Insider” (subscription) Main Features “Radar Love,” by Tom Verducci — An examination […]
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Went over to the local Barnes and Noble on my lunch hour. I always take a look at the “remainder” table to see if there’s a possibility I missed seeing some relatively recent baseball title. The answer is almost always “no,” unless it’s the occasional book produced especially for the store. These are usually coffee-table […]
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With the NCAA taking flight, the March 21 issue of Sports Illustrated offers just one baseball item: Joe Posnanski on the plight of the (his beloved) KC Royals. Now last week, that was a different story, and my apologizes for not reporting in a timely manner. Joe DiMaggio graces the cover, to mark the 70th […]
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I’ll have to pick up on these again, now that the (pre-) season is getting under way again. The Feb. 28 issue cover sported young Atlanta players Fred Freeman and Jason Heyward and additional items on some top rookies to watch (follow the rest of the links therein). The March 7 issue includes a short […]
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Because you can keep a page-a-day calendar on your bookshelf… Sports Illustrated columnist Joe Posnanski riffs his 2011 SI Calendar as a way of introducing some baseball history. As 2011 marks the 70th (!) anniversary of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, Posnanski also notes the publication of Kostya Kennedy’s upcoming 56: Joe DiMaggio and the […]
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(With apologies to the Beatles). We all know how we’d like others to change. SI‘s Cliff Corcoran has his lists as well. One for the American League teams, another for the National.
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The year-end issue pays tribute to the sports figures who passed away in 2010. Baseball notables included Bob Feller, Ron Santo, Bobby Thomson, George Steinbrenner, Phil Cavarretta, Sparky Anderson, Robin Roberts, Gil McDougald, Willie Davis, Dorothy Kamenshek (All-American Girls Professional Baseball League), Bob Sheppard, Jose Lima, Jim Bibby, Ernie Harwell, Ralph Houk, and Mike Cuellar […]
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Actually, with the way it works, the Dec. 20 issue was last week (Tim Linceum graces the Dec. 27 year-end issue)), but there’s a goodly amount of baseball items in “The Year in Sports Media” issue that I didn’t want it to go by unremarked upon. The robots are taking over! Steve Rushin writes about […]
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Sports Illustrated‘s Tom Verducci considers one of the questions I’ve been wondering about for a long time: Why do teams keep hiring the same old managers rather than give someone new a chance? I’ve often thought of baseball in terms of television shows: you keep getting the same actors in different roles though similar roles. […]
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Go, Giants! They get the cover story treatment from Tom Verducci (Giant Moment). But that’s it for awhile, I fear.
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It’s World Series time, but the cover story is about violent football hits. No quarrel there. Tom Verducci: Can You Say Cliff Hanger? Joe Sheehan: A November to Remember
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Sadly, the only baseball feature in the NHL Preview Issue is The Last Stand of Billy the Kid, a profile of Braves’ closer Billy Wagner by Michael Bamberger. There’s also a Joe Sheehan item about why Felix Hernandez deserves the AL Cy Young Award. Get used to it.
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SI‘s Joe Posnanski picks his 32 favorite covers in the 50+ history of the magazine here. They’re not all baseball, but as Spencer Tracy said in Pat and Mike, “what’s there is cherce.”
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Of course, football dominates this week, so the lone baseball item in Sports Illustrated is The Amazing Race, by L. Jon Wertheim: “How Ty Cobb, Nap Lajoie, a grudge-holding manager, a clumsy bribe, shoddy record-keeping and a very cool car made the batting title chase a national obsession 100 years ago.”
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Baseball items include The Embarrassment of Riches, about the McCourt divorce battle by Lee Jenkins, and Is It Next Year Yet?, an update on Billy Beane by Ben Reiter.
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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
