Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Can’t believe the season is almost over. The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of 2 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 1. Title Rank General Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams, by John Updike 1 The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 2 Moneyball: […]
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(In deference to our vegetarians out there). Steve Pona is the randomly-selected winner of the September Bookshelf Friend prize, Chicago Cubs Cookbook: All-Star Recipes from Your Favorite Players. The October book will be determined in the near future.
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premieres tomorrow on PBS. Consult your local listings. From The New York Times: “Baseball Continued: Between Rebirth and Calamity“ From The Atlantic: “Burns Back at Bat“
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Here’s a review of the Hammurabi The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by the legal writing team of Turbow and Duca, as handed down by Personal Injury Oakland.
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Trying to play catch-up once again: Reviews of Michael Shapiro‘s Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itself and Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards, by Josh Wilker, can be found on Meals from the Marketplace. Upshots: Bottom of the Ninth — “he […]
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Try as I might, I was unable to find a home from Becoming Manny. So after three attempts, I’ve decided to donate it to my local library and move on. The September FF book will be Chicago Cubs Cookbook: All-Star Recipes from Your Favorite Players, published by Triumph Books. Created as a fund-raising device for […]
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Spurred on by the hubbub around the 40th anniversary of Ball Four, Delia Cabe, who hosts the Creative Type blog at Boston.com, had this piece about the best baseball books, not just from her POV, but from those of local celebrities and others. And as the Baseball Reliquary program heralding that anniversary beckons, look for […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Noon on Friday, Sept. 27. Title Rank General Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 1 Ball Four, by Jim Bouton 2 The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime by Jason Turbow and Michael […]
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Some new programs are coming to a television near you. Ken Burns tacks The Tenth Inning onto his wonderful Baseball miniseries, which originally aired in 1995. The two-part, four-hour epilogue airs on PBS Sept. 28-29 at 8 p.m. EST, but as they say, check your local listings. You’ll probably have to adjust the volume on […]
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The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will host the Baseball Film Festival in Cooperstown, Oct. 1-3. As part of the three-day event, Billy Crystal, who directed and executive produced the classic film 61*, will be on hand as the Hall of Fame celebrates his 2001 production that told the story of the 1961 […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Sept. 10. Title Rank General Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 1 Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball, by Bill Madden 2 The Game from Where I Stand: A Ballplayer’s Inside View, by Doug Glanville 3 The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, […]
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Richard Sandomir of The New York Times reports on the generally disappointing documentary on the late Yankees owner, part of ESPN’s “30 for 30” series. Upshot: Documentaries soar when they reveal something new and send viewers on new paths. From the start of “One Night in Vegas,” the ESPN “30 for 30” film that had […]
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There are times when I see a book at Barnes and Nobel or some other chain store and shake my head. How on earth did this get published. The latest to fall into this category is Batting Stance Guy: A Love Letter to Baseball by Gar Ryness. It’s just like it sounds: a grown man […]
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I wonder if Jason Turbow has a bounty out. First it was Dallas Braden going after Alex Rodriguez for inappropriately traversing “his” mound during a game that generated a bump in interest for his book, The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime. Then it was the Florida […]
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I wonder if the writer of this piece about Doug Glanville’s new book, The Game From Where I Stand, was thinking of Leonard Koppett when she titled her article “A thinking man’s guide to a baseball life.” Koppett, wrote one of the earlier and better far-reaching analysis in The Thinking Man’s (later Thinking Fan’s) Guide […]
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Image via Wikipedia With all the news that’s been rekindled about the PED scandal, what better time to return to those kinder gentler times when the drug of choice was cocaine. The Pittsburgh City Paper ran this review of The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven by Aaron Skirboll. Older fans can recall Tim Raines, then of the […]
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Conversations with 17 Former Jewish Major League Baseball players, by Dave Cohen. Havenhurst Books, 2010. Hot on the heels, but apparently unconnected with the new documentary Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, we have this new oral history collection conducted by Cohen, described on the publisher’s website as “the familiar radio voice of Georgia […]
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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
Once in a lifetime: Ted Williams’ perfect coda
September 27, 2010
A handful of players have been fortunate enough to enjoy a storybook ending to their career: ending with a bang. None have done it with as much mystique as Ted Williams. The Splendid Splinter played his last major league game against the Baltimore Orioles on September 28, 1960. A dreary affair, with nothing on the […]
Tagged as: John Updike, Ted Williams
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