Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
The inspiration for the character of Dottie Henson in A League of Their Own, died on Saturday at the age of 88. Davis published her memoir, Dirt in the Skirt, (which weighs in at over 500 pages) in 2009. There was also a website in her name. I just visited the spot and there’s some music [...]
{ 0 comments }
Or “Methinks he doth protest too much.” I feel sorry for a lot of today’s celebrities, especially athletes. After years of (self?) denial, Lance Armstrong admitted he used performance enhancing drugs. Ballplayer after ballplayer swears on a stack of bibles that he’s clean, only to have the evidence turn out to prove him “misstating.” The [...]
{ 0 comments }
I’m a big fan of audio books. I recently borrowed two titles from the library — The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Mlodinow, Leonard, and 1861: The Civil War Awakening, by Adam Goodheart — that would seem to have nothing to do with the national pastime. But lo and behold the former [...]
{ 0 comments }
Tonight’s World Series game will honor America’s veterans. The New York Times ran this piece about Lou Brissie, who managed to have a brief Major League career despite being grievously injured in world war II. He was the subject of the 2009 biography The Corporal Was a Pitcher: The Courage of Lou Brissie, by former [...]
{ 0 comments }
I had mentioned Tom Hoffarth’s annual “30-books-in-30-days” project for the LA Daily News in an earlier entry today, not knowing that he posted this preview column (in which he was kind enough to give the Bookshelf a nod). Asa bonus, his entry has links to all the books he’s covered in the past, from 2008-2011, [...]
{ 0 comments }
As Dan Epstein over at Big Hair & Plastic Grass reminds us, “On this date in 1973, Yankee pitchers Fritz Peterson (front) and Mike Kekich (second from left) shock their team, baseball, and the country with the announcement that they’ve swapped families — their wives, children and pets are all included in the deal.” Seems [...]
{ 0 comments }
Don’t know how long this will last, but if you have a Kindle, I suggest you get over to Amazon and download Richard Doster’s novel Safe at Home for free ASAP. The story — about a young African-American trying to succeed on a minor league team in the deep South in the 1950s — is [...]
{ 1 comment }
A day late, but with all due respect to Scully, who turned 84 yesterday. Curt Smith, the go-to writer on the history of baseball broadcasting, published Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story in 2009.
{ 0 comments }
A (Winning) Season with the MIT Baseball Team, by Brooks C. Mendell. Aventine Press, 2009 This one has been sitting on the shelf for awhile, but with the 501 project in full swing, I’m trying to catch up with a vengeance, looking for little gems among the bigger fish. And we have a winnah! Beaverball [...]
{ 1 comment }
Been meaning to post about this for a couple of days. Don’t know what kind of pickup this story has been getting outside the New York area, but hearts were all aflutter on Saturday because Yankees long-time catcher Jorge Posada — batting .165 and hitting in the number nine spot in the lineup against the [...]
{ 0 comments }
The Yankee legend turns 86 today. You can’t have a baseball book about the Yankees post-war dynasty without Berra, who happens to be a nominal neighbor of mine in that we live in the same New Jersey town. One of his books is titled The Yogi Book: “I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said. “ [...]
{ 0 comments }
The Hall of Fame pitcher was born this date in 1871. The name was most appropriate: He completed 314 out of 381 game starts, averaging 24 wins over a relatively brief career of 10 years, including back-to-back 31+ seasons. And he didn’t even begin his big league career until age 28. Toss out an 8-8 [...]
{ 0 comments }
The New York Yankees outfielder turns 30 today. Granderson published a book for young kids, All You Can Be: Dream It, Draw It, Become It!, in 2009 while a member of the Detroit Tigers. Proceeds go to help his Grand Kids Foundation, which was established “to help fund educational field trips, art initiatives, science initiatives [...]
{ 0 comments }
Intro: As previously stated, the recent election of Robert Alomar and Bert Blyleven got me to thinking: how many Hall of Famers have had books written about them or penned their own stories. Here are the results. Again, this is not an all-inclusive list; almost all juvenile titles have been omitted. * * * “M” [...]
{ 2 comments }
“M” is truly an amazing initial for Hall of Famers, isn’t it? Mays, Mantle, Musial, Marichal, , McCovey, Mathewson, no to mention managers such as McCarthy, Mack and McGraw Connie Mack (Manager; inducted 1937) My 66 Years in the Big Leagues, by Mack (1950) Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball, Macht (2007) The [...]
{ 0 comments }
No, not Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, but Ron Cey, the six-time all-star third baseman for the LA Dodgers, and later the Chicago Cubs and Oakland A’s, turns 63 today. I actually found a book “by” Cey: How To Play Third Base: A Movie In Your Pocket, published in 1977 and described by a used book store [...]
{ 0 comments }
“The Great Emancipator” would have been 72 today. Flood published his story — The Way It Is – in 1971, the year he retired from the game. Since then, several books about Flood’s role in creating the free agent dream (or nightmare, depending on your point of view), have been released with lesser or greater [...]
{ 0 comments }
is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.
In my "day job," I'm the features and sports editor for a weekly New Jersey 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 Arnold Roth and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
Congratulations to Charles P. of Long Island City, NY, winner of the most recent Facebook Fan drawing, The Might Have Been: A Novel
Next up: Long Shot
Tell your friends!
My article on the later biographies of Babe Ruth appears in
My article on the Mets' 1969 post-season appears in
What I just read:
Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race
Well-intentioned, but somewhat disappointing in delivery of the intended message. B-.
What I'm reading now
Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age
First Impressions: Too soon to tell.
What I'm RE-reading now
Play for a Kingdom
What's next:
Gil Hodges: The Brooklyn Bums, the Miracle Mets, and the Extraordinary Life of a Baseball Legend
Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game
| Unique Visitors |
Ticket America can supply you with
Baltimore Orioles
and
Boston Red Sox as well as New York Yankees home games and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. We carry
Toronto Blue Jays seating plus
Atlanta Braves game time information and Miami Marlins New York Mets seating charts Philadelphia Phillies and all Washington Nationals
"Housecall service for your pet"
Advertising on the Bookshelf
Interested in sponsorship/advertising opportunities? E-mail here.
