Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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As opposed to fantasy baseball… Bruce Markusen over at Hardball Times posted this examination of “The Mighty Casey,” a classic episode of The Twilight Zone that originally aired during the series’ first season in 1960. The episode featured Jack Warden as the manager of the Hoboken Zephyrs and Robert Sorrels as the ballplayer of the [...]
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With so many books I haven’t gotten to, I find it almost wasteful to reread books I’ve enjoyed (who would revisit one they didn’t enjoy? That’s like saying “this is a picture of me when I was younger.” As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “Every picture of you is when you were younger.” [...]
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Recently finished reading my second baseball novel (!) in the last month; The Greatest Show on Dirt by James Bailey was the first. I’ll be doing reviews of both of them in the near future as my 501 schedule permits. I wanted to contact Joseph Schuster but could find no info either on Facebook nor his [...]
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Gary Perilloux posted this essay on Full Spectrum Baseball in which he argues that Joseph M. Schuster’s The Might Have Been: A Novel “may just be the Greatest American Baseball Novel ever written. Period.” Discuss.
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There was an awful lot of bizzaro “news” following the death of baseball legend Ted Williams in 2002. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Williams’ son, Ted Jr., who, according to many accounts, was a no-account person with no discernible skills of his own who pushed his ailing dad hard in the memorabilia [...]
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The author of everyone’s darling The Art of Fielding was interviewed on a recent segment on Talk of the Nation. You here it here:
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As long-time readers of the Bookshelf know, I feel awkward when it comes to reviewing fiction. It’s so subjective. I like dogs and you’re a cat person or I like vanilla and you can’t stand it. I’m also of a mind that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything (although that philosophy kind [...]
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Extra literary: Rutner, born this date in 1919, appeared in an even dozen games for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1947. He even had one home run. But he was immortalized by Eliot “Eight Men Out” Asinof as the inspiration for the main character in his 1955 novel about the struggles of a veteran minor leaguer, [...]
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When I play ball, most of my teammates call me Ronnie. When I was in college, they called me Kap, a take-off on my name coupled with the Kangolish-type of headgear I always wore (at camp in the Laurentian Mountains, they called me Casquette for the same reason). When I look for those literary birthday [...]
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Baseball in Folklore and Fiction, by Tristram Potter Coffin Rvive Books, 2010 Originally published as The Old Ball Game in 1971, The Mudville Heritage considers the hugely different way in which baseball was portrayed in the early to mid half of the 20th century. Coffin, emeritus professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, takes [...]
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by Peter Golenbock. The Lyons Press, 2007. When 7 came out a few years ago, many sportswriters — especially in the New York area — considered it a shande (shame). How could Golenbock — who had heretofore published only non-fiction — have besmirched the character of the late lamented Mickey Mantle with this trashy, borderline [...]
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Haven’t read this one, so not endorsing and not not endorsing, but seems like this could make for appropriate beach reading. Parenthetically, I wonder what the thought process was for the book art. At the risk of appearing risque, the cover makes me think of one of those apocryphal announcer miscues about a young couple [...]
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So my softball team participated in a playoff game last night. We lost a heart-breaker, up by three runs going into the bottom of the final frame to the team that finished in first place. Don’t get me started. Anyway, I bring this up in conjunction with Stephen King’s baseball novella. A passage from this [...]
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My review of the new Stephen King novella (plus an additional story) is up on Bookreporter.com. For your convenience, I’ve reprinted it below: There was plenty of buzz in the mystery/thriller/horror and baseball fiction communities when it was announced that Stephen King would release a novella titled BLOCKADE BILLY. Online book merchants quickly took pre-orders [...]
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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
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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
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At the risk of offending some of you…
September 25, 2012 · 1 comment
In my regular search for items for the blog, I cam across a couple of review for baseball fiction that caught my eye (ouch) and made me stop. A bit of background first. A couple of weeks ago The New York Times ran a front-page review of Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon’s latest novel in the [...]
Tagged as: Art of Fielding, baseball fiction, John Grisham, Michael Chabon, The Brothers K
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