Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Sports Publishing announces the release of Tony DeMarco’s new book, Tales From the Colorado Rockies. If this is anything like the other “Tales from” books from the publisher, it’s basically a collection of anecdotes. Seems to be almost one per team by now, some have earned two volumes. (Like “best” and “great/greatest” permutations, one of […]
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From a press release: One of the most famous and beloved baseball legends of all times is Mickey Mantle. Many books and articles have been written about the sports hero. In his new book, Mickey Mantle, Rookie in Pinstripes, author Fred Glueckstein, delivers an in-depth account of Mickey Mantle’s life covering his early life to […]
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Surprise, surprise. The Boston Phoenix finds fault with Richard Bradley’s new book on the 1978 playoff game between the Yankees and Red Sox. Perhaps had it turned out differently… “I don’t know about your reading habits,” writes George Kimball, “but when I come across an obvious factual error in a book, my initial inclination is […]
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Today’s Publisher’s Weekly ran this starred review of Feinstein’s latest: Though the season-long profile—in which a sportswriter follows a player, team or coach through a single season—grows increasingly familiar, this entry from Feinstein, one of the genre’s pioneers (Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today’s NFL;The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and […]
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(Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a regular feature.) Reading the new book by John Feinstein. I’ve always enjoyed his work, especially on baseball and golf, but I came across this paragraph and it got my eyes rolling: On page 155, Feinstein writes: Joe Torre, who came up to the majors as a catcher, […]
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From the Columbus Dispatch, this review of the new young adult fiction on love, loss, and baseball. Upshot: [Author Jennifer E. Smith] might be a rookie, but she hits a home run with a poignant and touching novel about hope, perseverance and the strength of the human spirit.
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As reviewed on Stltoday.com, a St. Louis-based web site. The End of Baseball is a Bill Veeck-inspired historical fiction, which is on my shelf for near-future reading. Upshot: Mainly, as somebody in baseball puts it, “The End of Baseball” sails straight down central. As somebody else in baseball used to say, it’s a winner.
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Catching up a bit: Bob Murcer’s autobiography as reviewed on MLB.com The Griddle on Baseballtoaster.com considers Peter Morris’ latest, But Didn’t We Have Fun? wickedlocal.com, a Massachusetts Web site, reports on an appearance by author Jim Collins at a Cape Cod high school. Collins is the author of The Last Best League: One Summer, One […]
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According to Long Beach’s own Grunion Gazette. The publisher, Arcadia, covers hundreds of topics in a photo album motif, heavy on the illustrations, light on text.
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A lengthy treatise of the Peter Morris book via Popmatters.com.
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Brian Lehrer discusses The Zen of Bobby V with documentary filmmaker Andrew Jenks. Meanwhile, on Soundcheck, Tim Wiles, co-author of Baseball’s Greats Hit, discusses Take Me Out to the Ball Game. http://audio.wnyc.org/bl/bl051908bpod.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, gives Fay Vincent’s book the treatment in The New York Times. Upshot: Mahler considers the effort serviceable. Nothing especially glowing, nothing especially critical. I have often thought that having reviews coming from […]
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[This appears as a sidebar to the “Class in Session” article in the May/June 2008 issue of ForeWord Magazine.] And now a word from our druggist Raymond Angelo Belliotti’s Watching Baseball, Seeing Philosophy devotes a chapter to Jose Canseco and the questionable use of performance enhancing drugs. The December 2007 release of the Mitchell Report—the […]
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[This piece appears in the May/June issue of ForeWord Magazine.] Baseball books: Class is in session The notion that baseball is a metaphor for life has been around since man first took bat to ball. In reality, it’s more appropriate to say that the national pastime is a metaphor for education; academic disciplines that baseball […]
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From a press release from the publisher: You Can Learn a Lot by Watching: What I’ve Learned about Teamwork from the Yankees and Life by Yogi Berra with Dave Kaplan (John Wiley & Sons) What does it take to be a real team player, especially in a society that glorifies selfishness and a corporate culture […]
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Dale Tafoya’s examination of Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, and the rest of the Steroid Generation releases. hits the bookstores this week. An excerpt from the book, another in an unfortunately long line of those on the whole sorry subject, is available at Athleticsnation.com.
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Some new stuff, some old in this mini-review.
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From Fredericksburg.com/The Free Lance-Star, this piece opines that the recent success of the Red Sox has meant the death of those books that complain (whine?) about the decades of disappointment suffered by the franchise’s fans.Upshot: The book is composed of numerous interviews by columnist David Laurila with assorted players, former players, coaches and personalities associated […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In a former life, I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted an award-winning bog about Jews and Sports.
I did a profile piece on the legendary cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was very generous in immortalizing me in this caricature.
My article on Sandy Koufax in the 1965 World Series appears in
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
* Column: The Real Jerry Coleman
May 23, 2008
Not a review of the former big leaguer’s new autobiography, per se, but a testimony to the man by Tom Shanahan of the Voice of San Diego.
Tagged as: Jerry Coleman, Korean War, New York Yankees, World War II
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