Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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Tra la, it’s May, the lusty Month of May That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray… That’s from the Broadway production of Camelot, folks. Look it up. Note: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the […]
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Haven’t done one of these in awhile, but here we go… This whole unpleasant business with Charlottesville has opened a can of worms when it comes to deciding which people who had previously been recognized by way of statues, parks, and roadways should have those honors stripped. Case in point: Tom Yawkey, former owner of the Boston […]
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More appropriately, perhaps, a Tribute from Johnny Bench, who contributed this “Field Notes” piece on some of his experiences on the field via The Players Tribune site, a part of which is his essay on “The Greatest Play I Ever Made.” Surprisingly thoughtful. At last year’s All-Star Game, Bench — along with Willie Mays , Hank […]
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Congrats to Willie Mays and the late Yogi Berra, two of the most recent recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. You can watch the CSPAN coverage of the event here. From NBCNews.com: New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, who died in September at the age of 90, was awarded the medal posthumously…. Celebrating Berra’s […]
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The New York Public Library posted this list of five books that concentrate on a single season, including: 1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever by Bill Madden Summer of ’68: The Season That Changed Baseball—and America—Forever by Tim Wendel Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in […]
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As in “What would (Brandon) Steiner do?” Pardon the Interruption has a regular feature in which the co-hosts discuss whether an event or story if “Something or nothing.” That’s the first thing that came to mind when I saw a front-page story in today’s New York Times titled “Alex Rodriguez’s Quest Is Going, Going … […]
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Boy, these things really do come in threes, don’t they? Charlie Williams is the answer to a trivia question: Who was traded for Willie Mays? The 67-year-old pitcher died on Tuesday. No obituary, so far, from the NY papers, but I think (hope) it’s only a matter of time. Williams was actually born in Flushing […]
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From the editors of Spitball Magazine, here are the finalists for the 2014 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year: Brooks: The Biography of Brooks Robinson, by Doug Wilson The Chalmers Race: Ty Cobb, Napoleon Lajoie, and the Controversial 1910 Batting Title that Became a National Obsession, by Rick Huhn The Fight of […]
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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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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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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… The top ten baseball books as per Amazon.com, […]
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The Clermont Sun (Batavia, Ohio) ran this review of Bill Madden’s 1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever. Upshot: “[T]his is not a book for casual ball-watchers or followers of modern baseball. No, it’s for fans who love the history of the game. For that […]
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The top ten baseball books as per Amazon.com. Caveat 1: Print editions only (at least for now); I’m old fashioned that way. Caveat 2: Since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read it. But it’ll be close enough for government work. Caveat […]
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Looking over the overlooked in baseball books stuff. In honor of Mothers’ Day, this piece by David Seideman in Forbes urges you to “Forgive Your Mom For Throwing Out Your Baseball Cards.” Is it my imagination or are Mookie Wilson and Bill Buckner turning into Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson? MLB.com described Mookie’s new memoir […]
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This it the time of year when the baseball media offer their considered opinions on their favorite prospects. Sometimes they’re spot on, other times, not so much. So I thought, why not apply this to the upcoming “rookie crop” of baseball books? That is, titles that are making their debuts in 2014 — no reprints/reissues […]
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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
