Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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The author of the inspirational memoir Fear Strikes Out — which openly chronicled Piersall’s battle with mental illness — died Saturday at the age of 87. The book was much better than the movie. According to the excellent obituary by Richard Goldstein in The New York Times, “I hated the movie,” Piersall wrote in his […]
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As many of you know, I serve as editor of the SABR Bibliography Committee quarterly newsletter. The most recent issues (Nov. 2011), features reviews on Under Pallor, Under Shadow: The 1920 American League Pennant Race That Rattled and Rebuilt Baseball, by Bill Felber; 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in […]
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When I was a kid, the back of typical non-star card included info about the players hobbies (“Tim likes to read”; “Bob hunts inn the off-season.” Here’s one for former Major Leaguer Jim Piersall, who suffered from mental illness in the early 1950s and wrote about his experiences in the best-seller, Fear Strikes Out. Was […]
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by Jimmy Piersall with Al Hirshberg. Atlantic Monthly Press/Little, Brown and Company, 1955. Jimmy Piersall was a two-time All-Star who sent 17 seasons in the Majors…and one summer in a mental institution. That’s the crux of this underrated autobiography from the mid-50s, well ahead of its time in discussing the issue of mental illness. Piersall’s […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In my most recent "day job," I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted another blog. Busy, busy, busy.
I did a profile piece on the award-winning cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
My article on the later biographies of Babe Ruth appears in
My article on the Mets’ 1969 postseason appears in
Profiles of several Jewish baseball figures appear in
