Kaplan: The baseball book that changed my life
From SABR member Ron Kaplan at The National Pastime Museum on January 25, 2016:
The subgenres within baseball literature have been fairly static for generations. You have your biographies, your celebrations of major events such as World Series or landmark anniversaries, your anthologies compacting the best columns or excerpts from larger works. Over the last few years, there has been an explosion of Moneyball-type titles about the business of the game using Sabermetrics instead of the time-honored (and seemingly outmoded) methods of relying on scouts. Generally speaking: same book, different day.
All due respect to the accomplishments of the subjects, but how many books about Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle can you read? How many versions of the 1951 “shot heard round the world?” Granted, each succeeding work offers additional research and perspective, but do they really make the reader think about the game?
But once in a while, you come across an unpresupposing item that stops you in your tracks, and say “Whoa, that’s something I never considered.”
I first discovered The Tao of Baseball: Entertaining & Thought-Provoking Commentaries on the National Pastime at a Barnes and Noble near my Manhattan office where I would go a few times a week during my lunch hour. The price tag indicates I saved a whopping $1.05 off the cover price.
Read the full article here: http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/tao-baseball-g%C5%8D
Originally published: January 29, 2016. Last Updated: January 29, 2016.