Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf
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A blog for news, reviews, previews, and interviews about baseball lit and other items of pop culture interest. Bringing news about baseball publications and other media to a discerning audience.
Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf
1w ago
A reminder: 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 time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally ..read more
Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf
1w ago
It’s easy to take a time period and hail it as a cutoff point. Think 1969, when MLB turned 100. Or maybe it was the 100th anniversary of a team or its playing ground But as we come out of the All-Star break, I wondering if we’ll ever have a moment like this ..read more
Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf
1w ago
Seems like the older I get, the more removed I am from the game played on the field. This is how I remember the All-Stars: And this is the way it is now: I understand everything these days is about selling merch, which is what further separates me from today’s fan. I love thumbing through ..read more
Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf
1w ago
I was looking for a post I thought I made about donating 501 to the French Baseball Federation on a trip we took there in 2013 . The rabbit hole I fell into brought up this entry I posted in 2010 which I thought was fun and might be appropriate for these lazy days of ..read more
Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf
2w ago
A reminder: 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 time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally ..read more
Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
2w ago
Bill James has left the building. I remember picking up the first edition of his Baseball Abstract when it first became commercially available in the late 1980s. Since then, his work has become synonymous with clever analysis, as opposed to just a collection of numbers one could find in various encyclopedias. The Walk-Off Edition, the ..read more
Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
3w ago
A reminder: 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 time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally ..read more
Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
3w ago
We boomers lost another hero from our childhood with the passing last week of Orlando Cepeda. I was talking about this with a colleague at work who recently lost an uncle, a die-hard Giants fan. We commiserated over the fact that the players we followed with awe and reverence are elderly now. And as they ..read more
Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
1M ago
A reminder: 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 time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally ..read more
Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
1M ago
I always felt a bit jealous of beat writers like Andy Martino. They get to go to every game, sit in (mostly) the best seats, have great access, etc. Of course, that’s an idealistic view. Travel can be brutal, players can be jerks (as can writers and their editors), competition can be fierce. Look at ..read more