Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf — If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here

The Bookshelf Conversations #178: Kevin Baker

May 2, 2024 · 0 comments

Take two.

Don’t know what happened, but the original post from earlier this week disappeared like a Doc Gooden curveball. Not even a draft of it, so I’m trying to recreate it as faithfully as possible.

It seems to many outside the area that New Yorkers have an inflated image of themselves (at least those living in Manhattan although maybe they see it as just high expectations). Everything they do has to be bigger, better, faster, more glamorous.

So it’s with some sense of schadenfreude when their teams don’t do well. Which historically hasn’t been the case for the three ball clubs highlighted in Kevin Baker‘s excellent new book, The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City.

Baker takes an amazingly well-researched look at the successes — and failures — of the trio of teams that called New York home, even if, technically it was only the Giants who played there while the Yankees and Dodgers hailed from the Bronx and Brooklyn, respectively. Each borough lent its own flavor in terms of fan base and the players they signed in the era before free agency. The New York Game winds down just at the end of WWII but not to fear: Baker had enough material for an upcoming second volume that will bring readers up to date.

But moire than just baseball, Baker delves into a lot of behind-the-scenes aspects including an amazing amount of back-door politics, urban planning, and sociology. It’s kind of amazing that the city survived all that graft, corruption, and racism.

The author has made a cottage industry of writing about New York, both fiction (Paradise Alley, Dreamland, Strivers Row, The Big Crowd, et al) and non (The Fall of a Great American City). He also has two previous baseball books, one of each: Sometimes You See It Coming (his first endeavor) and Becoming Mr. October, which he wrote with Reggie Jackson.

I’ve long been an admirer of his work and was thrilled when he agreed to be a guest for a Conversation. Enjoy.

And for those of you who want the audio only version, your wish is my command.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Tagged as: Brooklyn Dodgers, Kevin Baker, New York Giants, New York Yankees

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Lest We Forget: Paul Auster

May 1, 2024 · 0 comments

It’s funny, isn’t it, the things that change our lives?

Novelist Paul Auster, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 77, may have owed his career to baseball.

Paul Auster, l'écrivain qui devait sa vocation au baseball - L'Équipe From The Guardian:

The author was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1947. According to Auster, his writing life began at the age of eight when he missed out on getting an autograph from his baseball hero, Willie Mays, because neither he nor his parents had carried a pencil to the game. From then on, he took a pencil everywhere. “If there’s a pencil in your pocket, there’s a good chance that one day you’ll feel tempted to start using it,” he wrote in a 1995 essay.

(Although this apocryphal story about Mays righting the wrong in the Columbia University magazine seems a bit far-fetched since he c.aims he didn’t know Charles Einstein, the writer who supposedly worked on the Hall of Famer’s memoir, Willie Mays: My Life in and Out of Baseball.)

Auster’s obituary in The New York Times noted “[H]is home was not a happy one, he wrote. His parents’ marriage was strained, and his relationship with his father was remote…. He took refuge in baseball, a lifelong passion, as well as books.”

In 2014, Auster submitted a letter to the Times in which he offered “a radical idea to speed up games” and no, it didn’t involved a pitch clock. He suggested:

Eliminate the two-strike foul ball as a neutral play (neither strike nor ball) and rule it a strike. To compensate for the advantage this would give the pitcher, allow the batter to go to first base after three balls instead of four.

Sportswriter and author Andy Martino posted this on X (I hope the link remains still valid by the time you read this.)

There’s more baseball-related items to be sure, but I’ll close with this:

Tagged as: Paul Auster, Willie Mays

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You could keep this on your bookshelf, but I wouldn’t recommend it

May 1, 2024 · 0 comments

Passover is over.

Inevitably, we buy too many boxes of matzo and the question then becomes, what do you do with the leftovers? Sure, you can eat this stuff all year round, but would you really want to? I suppose I could ship it off to Alex Bregman…

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Baseball Best-Sellers, April 26, 2024

April 26, 2024 · 0 comments

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 the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category in which it should not be listed (in my opinion). For example, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect has appeared on Amazon’s BBS list. “Why” is a good question. There might be a smattering of the national pastime in it, but not enough to make it a baseball book per se (again, IMO).

Finally, adults only here. That is, no books for younger readers (i.e., 12 and under). Also no “adult” adult books (romance/erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme although goodness knows there are a bunch of those out there).

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I did with them. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list.

PRINT

The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City, by Kevin Baker (Look for a Bookshelf Conversation with the author next week.)
Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, by Keith O’Brien
The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and Tom Underwood
Wait Till Next Year, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Last of His Kind: Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness, by Andy McCullough (pre-sale, release date May 7)
The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Tom Hanson and Ken Ravizza

KINDLE BOOKS

AUDIBLE

Note: Amazon has changed the way they list audiobooks. No longer under the general category of “biography and memoir,” they are now treated in their own baseball/softball category. Here’s the general link to the section where you will find further links to the individual titles, their reader/narrators, and samples. Note further that these are updated regularly and the top ten list below might no longer be the same.

Charlie Hustle
Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
The Baseball 100
Wait Till Next Year
The New York Game
Why We Love Baseball
Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton (narrated by the author)
The Last of His Kind
The Arm
The Boys of Summer

Nothing much new to report. At all. But did you notice that there are no longer any books that could be used to put together fantasy teams?

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 2,674,170 overall in books; last time, 2,491,513. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,919,376; last time, 2,918,297.

Shameless self-promotion: if you’re looking for some good baseball reading during this down time, why not pick up a copy of 501? It’s like the dictionary; it has the other books in it, which reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

If you have read either of my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.

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It is high. It is far. It is…a book about John Sterling

April 22, 2024 · 0 comments

So is this a new trend in book publishing?

When Ken Holtzman passed away last week, I noted that a book had been published about him immediately after he died.

Recently, long-time Yankee announcer John Sterling announced his retirement. Since it’s not unusual for a team broadcaster to published his memoirs, I went to Amazon to see if he had indeed done so.

Couldn’t find anything by him, but in the same vein as Holtzman, there were a few titles about him that appeared just this week.

I have great reservations about the quality of such material, undoubtedly self-published very quickly to take advantage of events. I do not know any of the authors or their backgrounds and qualifications to write such books. In fact, I would not be surprised if these were written by AI (apologies if I’m wrong.)With that said, here’s what I found.

As a side note and speaking just personally, I never cared much for his shtick. He tried very hard to be cute with his home run calls, but they just didn’t do it for me. I know there are Yankee fans who love him and I wish him and I wish him all the best in his retirement.

An era comes to end as Yankees announcer John Sterling retires | fox61.com

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Baseball Best-Sellers, April 19, 2024

April 19, 2024 · 0 comments

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I did with them. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list.

PRINT

The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City, by Kevin Baker
Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, by Keith O’Brien
Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and Tom Underwood
The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
Wait Till Next Year, buy Doris Kearns Goodwin
My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom, by Evan Roberts

KINDLE BOOKS

AUDIBLE

Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
Charlie Hustle
Why We Love Baseball
Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton (narrated by the author)
The Baseball 100
The Boys of Summer
The New York Game
The Arm
The Methany Manifesto
Wait Till Next Year

The top four print spots are unchanged from last week’s post.

I wonder how much a review in The New York Times does for book sales? Baker’s New York Game appeared in last Sunday’s book supplement. I attribute The Bots of Summer and Wait Till Next Year to the passing of “Oisk,” aka Carl Erskine, the last remaining Brooklyn Dodger of that era. He passed away earlier this week at the age of 97.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 2,491,513 overall in books; last time, 2,242,426. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,918,297; last time, 2,915,785.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

If you have read either of my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.

Tagged as: Brooklyn Dodgers

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Lest We Forget: Carl Erskine, Whitey Herzog, Ken Holtzman

April 16, 2024 · 0 comments

Wow, it’s been a rough few days. First Fritz Peterson, now a trio of notables, for different reasons.

I’ve never seen anything like this on the obituary page of The New York Times‘ website:

Carl Erskine, the last of “the boys of summer,” died Tuesday at the age of 97.

“Oisk” was a mainstay of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ rotation, going 20-6 in 1953. Surprisingly, he was only named to the All-Star team once (1954) and finished with a lifetime record of a relatively modest 122-78 — mainly because he played his last Major League game at the age of 32 — all with the Dodgers in both Brooklyn and their first few years in Los Angeles. Here’s his obit by Richard Goldstein (author of Superstars and Screwballs: 100 Years of Brooklyn Baseball) in today’s NY Times online.

Erskine published a couple of books: What I Learned From Jackie Robinson: A Teammate’s Reflections On and Off the Field with Burton Rocks in 2005 and a couple of editions of Carl Erskine’s Tales from the Dodger Dugout beginning in 2000. Naturally, he is also a major part of any book about the Dodgers of that era, beginning with Roger Kahn’s classic.

Whitey Herzog, aka The White Rat, died Monday at the age of 92. He didn’t have much of a career as a player, appearing in 634 games over eight years in the majors. But he made it to the Hall of Fame as a manager, leading the St. Louis Cardinals to three pennants and a World Championship in 1982. He also had the helm of the California Angels, Texas Rangers, and Kansas City Royals, finishing with a career mark of 1,281-1,125 (which is just 39th on the all-time list, leading to a raised eyebrow over his HoF credentials). Goldstein also wrote Herzog’s obit for the Times.

Herzog published White Rat: A Life in Baseball with Kevin Horrigan in 1987 and You’re Missin’ a Great Game: From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back with Jonathan Pitts, one of the many books about all the “problems” with baseball, in 1999.

Ken Holtzman, winningest Jewish pitcher in MLB history, dies at 78 - Israel Sports - The Jerusalem Post Finally (for now, anyway), Ken Holtzman, the winningest Jewish pitcher in the majors, died Sunday at the comparatively young age of 78. He managed that accomplishment by pitching for 15 seasons, beating Sandy Koufax for the honors. In fact, here’s a piece from The Forward by Dan Epstein. about a famous showdown between the two outstanding lefties.

Holtzman began his career with the Chicago Cubs as a 19-year-old in 1965. He spent the majority of his career with that club, for whom he tossed two no-hitters, before being traded to the Oakland A’s in 1971 for Rick Monday. His timing was great, as the A’s won five pennants and three world series during his stay. He sandwiched his only 20-win season (21-13) between two 19-victory campaigns. Holtzman was traded with Reggie Jackson to the Baltimore Orioles in 1976 and rejoined Jackson with the Yankees a season later. A thoughtful athlete, he did not have a great relationship with Yankees manager Billy Martin, to say the least. Holtzman was briefly a manager himself, taking the helm of the Petach Tikva Pioneers in the sole season of the Israel Baseball League in 2007. He left in the middle of the season, unhappy with the way the league was run.

Between the mainstream and Jewish presses, Holtzman’s passing will be well-documented. Here‘s Richard Sandomir‘s offering in the Times as well as obits from the New York Post, Washington Post, St. Louis Jewish Light (his hometown), and Chicago Tribune. Needless to say, he’s a staple of anything about Jews and baseball. I found one book on Amazon which apparently was published just yesterday: The Legendary Journey of Ken Holtzman: Unveiling the Untold Story of Baseball’s Trailblazing Icon.

Tagged as: Carl Erskine, Ken Holtzman, Whitey Herzog

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Lest We Forget: Fritz Peterson

April 15, 2024 · 0 comments

I’ve may have mentioned a project I’m working on: collecting obituaries of ballplayers that have appeared in The New York Times with the notion of how a player is identified in the opening lines.

Here’s what Bruce Weber had to say in today’s edition, which had a “refer” on the front page.

Fritz Peterson, who was a stalwart pitcher for the ineffectual Yankees of the late 1960s and early ’70s, but whose lingering renown derived more from one of baseball’s most notorious “trades” — his exchange of wives with a teammate — has died. He was 82.

In fact, it wasn’t just wives; it was families, pets, and house.

Although no cause of death was given, Peterson had been in declining health for years, which is one of the reasons he wanted to publish his memoirs.

Peterson spent most of his career with the Yankees, with whom he went 20-11 and earned his sole All-Star berth in 1970. He was traded to Cleveland in 1974 in the deal that brought Chris Chambliss to the Bronx. Peterson was traded to the Texas Rangers in 1976. He signed as a free agent with the Chicago White Sox but never played for them. Peterson finished with a record of 133-131

I met Peterson a few times later in his life. He self-published two books — Mickey Mantle is Going to Heaven and When the Yankees Were on the Fritz: Revisiting the Horace Clarke Years — and was at Yankees Fantasy Camp when I was reporting on a special Jewish program for the NJ Jewish News.

If memory serves (and it sometimes doesn’t), I had a hand in setting up a meeting between Peterson and veteran sportswriter Maury Allen, who first reported on the “trade” between the lefty pitcher and teammate Mike Kekich. Needless to say, it was quite the to-do and Allen became persona non grata to Peterson. I had done a story about Allen when he moved to Cedar Grove, NJ and we developed a friendship that was all too brief (Allen passed away in 2010). During that time, I told him that Peterson was coming to the Yogi Berra Museum (see “Author Appearance” below) to promote his first book. Wouldn’t it be nice to come by and clear the air? To my surprise, Allen agreed and it turned out to be quite a charming scene.

I did a Bookshelf Conversation with Peterson and another interview during the Yankee camp session.

Baseball Best-Sellers, April 12, 2024

April 12, 2024 · 0 comments

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I did with them. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list.

PRINT

The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City, by Kevin Baker
Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, by Keith O’Brien
Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and Tom Underwood
The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom, by Evan Roberts
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics: Why WAR, WHIP, wOBA, and Other Advanced Sabermetrics Are Essential to Understanding Modern Baseball, by Anthony Castrovince
The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
Baseball America 2024 Prospect Handbook

KINDLE BOOKS

AUDIBLE

Charlie Hustle
Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
Why We Love Baseball
The Baseball 100
The New York Game
Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton (narrated by the author)
Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time
The Arm
Ninety Percent Mental
The Methany Manifesto

Nothing new to report, although I like seeing Castrovince’s book on analytics pop up at this point of the season as a reminder of what’s “important” to consider when we evaluate players. It’s kind of sad to see nothing related to Hank Aaron on the 50th anniversary of him breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record. Short collective memory, I guess.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 2,242,426 overall in books; last time, 1,882,763. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,915,785; last time, 2,913,058.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

If you have read either of my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.

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Bits and Pieces, April 10, 2024

April 10, 2024 · 0 comments

♦ As we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Hank Aaron’s breaking the all-time home run record, I’m kind of surprised he hadn’t already had a stamp issued in his honor.

A sheet of stamps featuring Hank Aaron in his batting stance, next to an image of him hitting his record-breaking home run.

♦ Emily Nemens, author of The Cactus League: A Novel, wrote “On the All-But-Invisible Role of Interpreters, in Literature and in Baseball” for Lithub.com. I wonder how soon we will see a book about the “Shohei Ohtani Scandal?”

♦ I think we need to take a look as what we mean when we call someone an “iron man” in baseball. Playing “a full 162 games three times and … at least 155 games in addition four times?” Maybe that’s the new definition in a game where pitching aces barely throw 200 innings these days. They don’t make ’em like Cal anymore.

♦ Wow, this makes me feel old. From MYNorthwest.com, “As some diehard fans still remember, the Pilots were Seattle’s first Major League Baseball team.” Diehard fans? As an older person, I guess I take for granted that any baseball fan should know this, but I may be wrong. The same piece suggest “many books have been written about the multifaceted shenanigans that contributed to the team’s demise.” Many? How many is many? This is what I found on a quick Amazon search:

The 1969 Seattle Pilots: Major League Baseball’s One-Year Team, by Kenneth Hogan (McFarland, 2006)
Becoming Big League: Seattle, the Pilots, and Stadium Politics, by Bill Mullins (University of Washington Press, 2014)
Inside Pitch: Insiders Reveal How the Ill-Fated Seattle Pilots Got Played into Bankruptcy in One Year, by Rick Allen (Persistence Press, 2020)
The Seattle Pilots Story, Carson Van Lindt (Marabou Pub., 1993)

Of course, any substantial account of the Milwaukee Brewers should have the Seattle “heritage” Seattle in it.

♦ From NPR station WSIU, this in connection with recent events: “With the total solar eclipse coming up on Monday, April 8, we thought we would revisit Pete Peterson’s Reading Baseball segment from just before the 2017 eclipse where Pete looks at a novel that includes a story of an eclipse and America’s favorite pastime.” Spoiler alert: The book is Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, published in 1889. (More on Twain and baseball via MLB official historian John Thorn.)

♦ There have been several books about “unwritten rules,” but I’m waiting for an overall view of “The anthropology of the baseball brawl.”

Tagged as: Hank Aaron, Seattle Pilots

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Lest We Forget: Jerry Grote

April 9, 2024 · 0 comments

I look at the ages of these guys on Baseball-Reference and they’re all well into their 70s and 80s now. Where has the time gone?

Jerry Grote, the backbone behind the plate for the Miracle Mets, passed away Sunday at the age of 81. Here’s his obituary by Richard Goldstein in The New York Times. Still working on a project about the first sentences in a player’s obituary that appeared in the Times. Here’s the one for Grote:

Jerry Grote, who was among the National League’s leading catchers of his time and guided the pitching staff that propelled the New York Mets to their astonishing 1969 World Series championship, died on Sunday in Austin, Texas. He was 81.

Grote called the games for one of the best rotations in Mets history: Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry, Don Cardwell, and Jim McAndrew (who just died last month). He spent 12 of his 16 big league seasons with the Mets after debuting with the Houston Colt 45 in 1963 at the age of 20. he also spent time with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Kansas City Royals, finishing with a .252 batting average, 39 homers, and 404 RBIs. Sorry if putting up these stats — as opposed to the new ones deemed more indicative of a players career/worth — makes me an old coot.

No book specifically by or about Grote, but he’s a major component of any book about that ’69 team.

Among the other Mets from that memorable season who are no longer with us (with the year of their passing):

Tom Seaver (2020)
Don Cardwell (2008)
Jim McAndrew (2024)
Tug McGraw (2004)
Cal Koonce (1993)
Al Jackson (2019)
Danny Frisella (1977)
Les Rohr (2020)
Donn Clendenon (2005)
Ed Charles (2018)
Kevin Collins (2016)
Bud Harrelson (2024)
Tommie Agee (2001)

Frisella was killed in a dune buggy accident at the age of thirty. Agee and Koonce passed at 58 and 52, respectively.

Grote’s departure reminded me of an old joke. I’ll paraphrase using him and his old batterymate, Tom Seaver.

Seaver is dying and calls his Grote for a last visit. Grote asks him, “If you can, let me know if there’s baseball in heaven.”

The day before Grote’s death, he gets a visit from Seaver’s ghost.

“How are you, pard,” the Texan asks? “So tell me, is there baseball in heaven?” Seaver replies, “Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news: there is baseball in heaven. The bad news: you’re catching tomorrow.”

Tagged as: Jerry Grote, New York Mets

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Seems like only yesterday

April 8, 2024 · 0 comments

It can’t possibly be fifty years since Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record.

I vividly remember watching it on TV and being amazed that they halted the game to celebrate.

There were a number of books about Aaron that came out after he broke the record but here are a couple of more recent offerings that focus specifically on the home run chase:

Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America, by Tom Stanton
Hank Aaron: Reflections on Hammerin’ Hank and the Home Run That Made History, by Kevin Neary
715 at 50: The Night Henry Aaron Changed Baseball and the World Forever, by Randy Louis Cox (even if it does have my bugaboo word “forever”)

This is a nice little tribute, posted today. Although I don’t know why the producers felt compelled to include contemporary players. Guess they wanted to make it relevant for younger fans.

Tagged as: Hank Aaron

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Baseball Best-Sellers, April 5, 2024

2024 title

Happy Opening Day (Week), everybody! 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 […]

Tagged as: New York Mets

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Bits and Pieces, April 3, 2024

2024 title

♦ As mentioned in a previous post, the period around opening day is full of reading suggestions for greater and lesser fans of the game. Here’s one from the Chicago Tribune citing the baseball works of Brashler, Plimpton, and Updike (sorry, paywall). ♦ Here’s another: The Economist published “Six Great Books About Baseball,” which includes […]

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Baseball Best-Sellers, March 29, 2024

2023 title

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“Riddle me this, Batman”

trivia

Finally, a decent trivia quiz, courtesy of George F. Will in the Washington Post. I would love to see a whole book by Will mixing history with trivia, but somehow I think it might be beneath him.

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Just what we need…

Stats

More stats. From BaseballProspectus.com: Introducing StuffPro and PitchPro For as complex as pitching is, it’s also surprisingly simple: Throw good pitches, get good results. But what defines a good pitch? Velocity, movement, location, and other variables all play roles, but condensing their impacts into a single number is difficult. Historically, teams have used a combination […]

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The Bookshelf Conversation #177: Greg DeHart

2024 title

After seeing the upcoming documentary, Max Patkin: The Clown Prince of Baseball, I asked some of my colleagues if they had ever heard of him. Just about all of them said “no.” Then I asked if they had seen Bull Durham, pointing out Patkin’s role in the classic film. Now they remembered. Greg DeHart was […]

Tagged as: Greg DeHart, Max Patkin

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Time begins tomorrow

Commentary by Ron Kaplan

Remember all those posts about the decline of the annual baseball magazine? The same could be said for baseball previews in newspapers. There was a time when I used to collect these things, with the the help of my friends across the country. They were different from the magazines in that they had writers who […]

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