Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf
If it can fit on a bookshelf, it fits here
Ron Kaplan by Arnold Roth
In my "day job," I'm a writer/sports editor for a New Jersey weekly newspaper. I'm also the editor of the Bibliography Committee Newsletter for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
I did a piece on the award-winning cartoonist and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
Statistical Theory
Subscribe via...
w3counter(10913);
I noticed that you made passing reference to my book, “Bleeding Red: A Red Sox Fan’s Diary of the 2004 Season” in a post on “Blooks” and thought I’d share how it came into being in that way — it was never, in fact, intended to be a blook, or even part of a blog, though I always conceived of it as a book. I am a history professor who is mad about baseball, and for years I had been intending to keep a diary, a sort of fan’s memoir, of a Red Sox season in the hoped of understanding what it means to be a fan, why it means so much, and to chronicle the day-to-day, up-and-down nature of loyal fanhood in a long baseball season.
I also write a blog, dcat, (http://dcatblog.blogspot.com) about politics, history, sports, and so forth. (I am also the writer and blogger on African issues for the Foreign Policy Association — http://southafrica.foreignpolicyblogs.com/) In the spring of 2004, after I had been keeping the diary for a few months (I wrote the first entries in February after beginning a fellowship at UVA’s Virginia Foundation for the Humanities where I was working on my “real” book but had more time and sdpace to write and think) I posted one of my entries on Pedro Martinez’s historical greatness at dcat. It engendered a lot of conversation and another blogger saw that post and asked if I would post all of my entries that way — having an audience proved good for the project.
As the year started coming to a close, I began looking for publishers. Alas, I was preempted by books by Stephen King/Stewart Onan and Bill Simmons, so big publishers steered clear. I found a small academic publisher in DC that also has a trade imprint, and they accepted my book and published it in 2005. Sometime after the book was entered into a blog-derived book competition — the blloks you mentioned — though I had never heard of the concept before.
My book has been very well reviewed, albeit not reviewed as often as I would have liked! But the “blook” aspect of it was incidental, truth be told, and I still would never consider it to be a “blook” despite the fact that a lot of the individual entires did appear on a blog at someone else’s behest.
Cheers –
Derek Catsam
Ron,
As an avid reader of baseball books, I was thrilled to come across your blog. Keep up the good work and I look forward to checking back in to see what baseball books I should purchase next!
–Bullpen Brian–
Ron Hi,
Thought you might be interested in:
http://www.dovabramson.com/field_of_life
Thanks for the mention, Ron. For the record, Scott and I are not Mordecai Brown’s grandchildren. He never had any children, therefore, no grandchildren. My grandfather was Mordecai’s first cousin.
A minor point. Thanks again, and I invite your readers to visit: http://www.threefinger.com
Cindy
RK: Seems I was misinformed. My apologies for any confusion.
Great site. Love it. Check out some of these really awesome baseball books.
The End of Baseball
The Legend of Mickey Tussler
The Entitled
Once Upon a Fastball
Ron, I read many years ago about Phil Linz hitting a foul ball in the stands and it hit his own Mother. I would like to have confirmation of this, if possible. Thanks, Tom.