From the category archives:

Review by Ron Kaplan

Rabbit Hole? Try Attic Hole

December 27, 2023

Since it was fairly moderate yesterday I decided to tool around the attic in yet another attempt to purge. That’s where I have the bulk of my library as well as other baseball-related items, including a foot locker of baseball cards. Problem with trying to clean up is that you get caught up in a […]

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They say you never have a second chance to make a first impression. Well, duh. But you may have a second chance when it comes to a book review. I often wonder about professional critics. What kind of expertise do they have in the topic they’re writing about? What was their mood when they wrote […]

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I have been contributing to Bookreporter.com for nigh on to 25 years. They’ve always been quite generous when it comes to my spouting off, mostly on baseball literature, giving me the space for several feature-length pieces. Here’s my latest “roundup review” which includes: THE 1998 YANKEES: The Inside Story of the Greatest Baseball Team Ever […]

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There are scores of new books coming out about the national pastime but two early runners for “most fun” have to be Baseball’s Memorable Misses: An Unabashed Look at the Game’s Craziest Zeroes, by Dan Schlossberg, and Major League Debuts 2023 Edition, by James Bailey. It’s amazing that Schlossberg, with almost 40 baseball titles in […]

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The Death and Resurrection of Baseball: Echos from a Distant Past, by William R. Douglas From time to time I wonder how much longer baseball will last. Will the astronomical salaries paid to players who have little allegiance to a particular franchise finally turn off working-class fans, fed up with ever-increasing ticket prices? Will the […]

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While I was chatting with Jon Leonoudakis about his latest documentary, Ball Four Turns 40, I remembered that one of my earliest interviews was with Jim Bouton. This was in the pre-Covid, Pre-Zoom days when I was doing everything on a digital tape recorder over the phone or in person (and the fidelity or lack […]

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How to Beat a Broken Game: The Rise of the Dodgers in a League on the Brink, by Pedro Moura. People have been complaining about baseball for as long as there’s been baseball. In doing research for any number of projects, one can look at the archives of local newspapers or The Sporting News or […]

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A History of the World Series, by Tyler Kepner, on Bookreporter.com.

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Trailer trash?

July 22, 2022

Reading Ron Shelton’s wonderful book, The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit — which I reviewed for an upcoming post on Bookreporter.com — I was interested in seeing the trailer again. I wondered if it was “true to the final product.” Many […]

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Harkening back to the review I posted about Once Upon a Time In Queens, I was thrilled to be able to get the director of the four-part 30-for-30 sports doc series from ESPN. And since I did put up that entry, this intro will be relatively brief. Nick Davis — and profound apologies for calling […]

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Just Like Me: When the Pros Played on the Sandlot, by Kelly G. Park (Sunbury Press, 2020) Guilty pleasure time: One of the things I’ve been doing during my convalescence is binging some shows I had previously overlooked. One such program is Young Sheldon, since I was a big fan of The Big Bang Theory. […]

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Got this one when it came out last year, but given my deep-seated reluctance to deal with baseball fiction, the surprise isn’t that it took so long to read (and write about) it, but that I got to it at all. I have given this hesitancy a name: I call it “The Art of Fielding […]

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My review of Andy Martino’s Cheated: The Inside Story of the Astros Scandal and a Colorful History of Sign Stealing, as per Bookreporter.com.

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My annual spring “review roundup” is on Bookreporter.com. This years titles include GATHERING CROWDS: Catching Baseball Fever in the New Era of Free Agency, by Paul Hensler THE RESHAPING OF AMERICA’S GAME: Major League Baseball After the Players’ Strike and AMERICA’S GAME IN THE WILD-CARD ERA: From Strike to Pandemic, both by Bryan Soderholm-Difatte THE […]

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New: An asterisk serves to let you know that the author is a member of the Pandemic Baseball Book Club. I enthusiastically recommend you visit the site, sign up for their newsletter, and buy some merch. A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by […]

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New: An asterisk serves to let you know that the author is a member of the Pandemic Baseball Book Club. I enthusiastically recommend you visit the site, sign up for their newsletter, and buy some merch. A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by […]

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My latest review on Luke Epplin’s Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball appears on Bookreporter.com. Look for an interview with the author in the near future.

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Just as Opening Day is just around the corner for players, so is it also for readers about the national pastime. The schedule might not be the same: there won’t be multiple releases every day, not even one a week, at least not on a regular basis. But the “rookies” will be hitting the shelves […]

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Note: 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 writing one). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes. In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one […]

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but I was tickled to be included in Bookreporter.com’s “Bookaccino Live” zoom meeting last week with other long-time contributors to the site as it celebrated its 24th anniversary. Not exactly sure how long I’ve been associated with this wonderful group, but it’s gotta be at least 18 years. Since then I’ve done scores of reviews, […]

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