Clearing the Bases: A Veteran Sportswriter on the National Pastime

"Just when you think there's nothing new to be said about baseball, along comes Jim Kaplan's latest 'takes' on the game. As a Sports Illustrated writer and then freelance author of 14 baseball books, he's covered, written and thought about the game for many decades, and in this book's tasty stew of chapters, we get a fascinating - yes, and often witty - sampling of his original, insightful and occasionally unexpected appraisals of aspects of the game. Whether offering offbeat profiles of individual players or his defense of the role that baseball continues to play in American life, Kaplan's relaxed, no-nonsense tone is backed by the authority of a guy who truly knows and loves the game." - John S. Bowman, baseball historian, co-author of Diamonds in the Rough: The Untold History of Baseball. Jim Kaplan earned a B.A. in history from Yale and an M.A. in journalism from Northwestern before spending three years as a sportswriter and book reviewer for the Minneapolis Star. He was a Sports Illustrated baseball writer for 16 years and has written 14 books on the game. George Will called him the "poet laureate" of fielding. A contract adviser for the National Writers Union (United Auto Workers, Local 1981) and a bridge columnist for the Vineyard Gazette, Kaplan and his wife, poet and critic Brooks Robards, divide their time among Northampton and Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts and Santa Fe, New Mexico.