Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com on Friday, January 8. HAPPY LATE YEAR! Title Rank General 2010 Baseball Forecaster (Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster) 1 Baseball Prospectus 2010 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 3 Baseball America 2010 Prospect Handbook: The Comprehensive Guide to Rising Stars from the […]
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A Hall of Fame Pitcher & A Hall of Fame Hitter Talk About How the Game is Played, by Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson with Lonnie Wheeler (Doubleday, 2009) When I first heard about this book, I immediately wondered, who had the bigger ego? How was the process handled? Did Gibson tell Jackson to meet […]
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Actually, most are not exactly new, but re-released in paper back editions. But I guess they’re all new if you haven’t read them yet (this sounds like one of those “if a tree falls in the woods…” bits). The only one that might qualify is A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations That […]
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The MLB Network will present Holy Land Hardball, the documentary about the lone season of the Israel Baseball League, on Sunday, Jan. 10 at 10 p.m.
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BleedCubbieBlue, a — what else — Cubs blog, posted this review of Bruce Weber’s book. Upshot: “Bruce Weber, you wrote one heckuva book.”
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This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com on Friday, January 1. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Title Rank General The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 2 The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story […]
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Semi-shameless self promotion: this assessment was written by James Bailey and yours truly. Titles include: Heart of the Game: Life, Death and Mercy in Minor League America As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend Catcher: How the Man behind the Plate […]
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This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com on Saturday, December 26. Title Rank General Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 1 The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci 2 Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress 3 Baseball Prospectus 2010 4 The Bill James Handbook 2010 […]
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The current issue of ESPN the Magazine includes a cute feature titled “Over the Top,” by Amanda Angel. The Greatest Story Ever Told is about Jesus himself, but these days you’d half-expect to find that title on a bookseller’s spoets shelves. A quick glance at the genre shows many true, real and seemingly impossible epic […]
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This is the time of year when we get the lists of the best and worst movies, books, etc. of the year. And because this is 2009, we get the bonus best/worst of the decade. Larry Tye’s Satchel was selected by The New York Times as one of the 100 notable books of the year, […]
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Jon Weisman, who blogs about the Dodgers for the Los Angeles Times, gives a sample of Chris Jaffe’s Evaluating Baseball Managers: A Comprehensive History and Performance Analysis, 1876-2008 (McFarland) as it pertains to his home team. Upshot: The book, as a whole, “is going to be as big as it sounds.”
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So if you haven’t gotten your literary sports fan anything yet, here are some suggestions from Joe Favorito, a specialist in sports branding. You’ll have to winnow out the baseball titles from the rest. Same for Stiletto Sport’s list (sorry if I sound chauvanistic, but only a women’s list could consider Alyssa Milano’s Safe at […]
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, December 18. Title Rank General The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci 1 The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski 2 Moneyball: The Art […]
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Including: ◊ Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime, by Mark Frost. Unabridged (13:56), narrated by Andrew Garman. Hear a sample: ◊ Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher and a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk about How the Game Is Played , by Bob Gibson, […]
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My apologies for falling way behind. Still basking in my post-Yankee fantasy camp experience, which you will be able to read about in the pages of the New Jersey Jewish News in the next week or so, as well as Broadside Bombers next year. So without further ado: Ron Shandler, who publishes the popular Baseball […]
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, December 11. Title Rank General The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci (448) 1 The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski (649) 2 Sixty […]
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From Perth to Sacramento, by Nicholas R.W. Henning (Booksurge.com, 2009) Regular readers of the Bookshelf know I rarely offer my own reviews of baseball fiction. I find it too subjective and my education and skills in critiquing the genre too inferior. But once in awhile a book will find its way here that bears some […]
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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
