Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
It’s been a long time since we’ve enjoyed a new baseball project from the pen/typewriter/computer of W.P. Kinsella. Well, the wait is over. Kinsella has recently released Name Your Link, which tells the story of Julio and Esteban Pimental, twins whose divine destiny for baseball begins with games of catch in the womb. They mature […]
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Which would look a lot neater (both figuratively and literally) if I had been using these items by Bethany Heck over at the Eephus League site. (Also available as a two-scorebook bundle.)
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The New York Times has included The Art of Fielding as one of its “100 Notable Books of 2011.” Now there’s a shocker. Baseball Nation posted a two-part interview with author Chad Harbach, which you can read here and here.
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Someone who doesn’t think The Art of Fielding is Abner Doubleday’s gift to baseball. Or something like that; it’s all about the metaphors. Richard Peterson, an author and editor of books on the national pastime, published this critique in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which starts off The celebration of “The Art of Fielding” as the […]
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Musial turned 91 yesterday. I kind of feel badly for him. Although he’s surely one of the all-time greats, the contemporary fans rarely hears his name mentioned in the same breath as a Willie Mays or a Mickey Mantle, even though Musial’s stats are comparable, if not better. Books on Musial include: Stan Musial: Baseball’s […]
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The old joke goes, “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” That’s kind of the way I’ve come to think about my library. Obviously there’s no way I can acquire every book I’d like, plus the ones I do have, gathered over 30 years, are starting to make a dent in the floor. […]
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Now that we’re headed into the cold dark days, it’s time to cozy up with some baseball reading. This serves a few purposes. For one thing, it keeps your mind on the game. Secondly, with all this time, you can branch out and pick up a few titles you either didn’t have time for it […]
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Haven’t done one of these in a long time. Then again, haven’t done blogging in general on a regular basis in a long time. Yogi Berra loves the movies. In fact, he used to have a regular gig as a reviewer for ______. In this Wall Street Journal piece by Jason Gay, Berra shares his […]
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To me, at least. Amazon.com has selected Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding as Best Book of the Year. Seriously? I haven’t read any of the other top nine books, but I’m sorry — and with all dues respect — I can’t believe that TAOF is the best title, out of the hundreds that have […]
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Bookshelf friend Tom Hoffarth (he of the annual “30 baseball books in 30 days” feature for the Los Angeles Daily News) posted this amusing item culled from David Javerbaum’s new book, The Last Testament: A Memoir. In short, don’t ask God to help your team; although he’s a sports fan, that’s below his pay grade. […]
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The editors of Spitball released their list of finalists for the 2011 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year: The Art of Fielding: A Novel by Chad Harbach Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game by John Thorn The Big Show: Charles M. Conlon’s Golden Age Baseball […]
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Tom Seaver and His Times, by Steven Travers. Taylor Trade, 2011. I have very mixed feelings about this latest effort by Travers (A Tale of Three Cities: The 1962 Baseball Season in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco; The 1969 Miracle Mets: The Improbable Story of the World’s Greatest Underdog Team; and Dodgers Past […]
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The Oct. 24 issue carried items about “Goats of Octobers Past,” Joe Sheehan on the Rangers; and Tom Verducci on the Series in general The Oct. 31 issue carried Verducci’s update on one of the most exciting Fall Classic in recent years ; a “sympathy note” to Red Sox Nation, and a sneak peek at […]
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At the risk of sounding jingoistic, if the Fall Classic doesn’t take place in New York, it posts a problem for local sports pages. How much should they be writing, and would their readers care that much. So you go looking for filler. In this case The New York Times published this cool piece last […]
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Sometimes I wonder, with all the new books coming out every year, why anyone would want to read something they’ve already read before. So many books, so little time. But while working on the 501 Book project I came across several titles in my library that I had never read, which no doubt led to […]
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With the Cardinals in the World Series, George Vecsey made a return visit to NPR, appearing on The Leonard Lopate Show to discuss his latest book, Stan Musial: An American Life. Here’s a review from the Houston Chronicle, just because I liked the caricature so much.
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Okay, this time I mean it. These will be the last links to some interesting pieces about the new film. From Forbes, “Can Brad Pitt Pitch ‘Moneyball’ to Box Office Glory?” From Entertainment Weekly‘s “Inside Movies” column, “‘Moneyball’: How audiences fell back in love with screenwriting.” From Pop Matters, “Moneyball: By The Numbers” From The […]
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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
Analysis: The Art of Fielding
October 28, 2011
Not by me (at least not yet), but via a “book club” effort by the always thoughtful Pitchers and Poets blog. They started this “event” Sept. 21 (shows how long I’ve been out of circulation), so if you start from the beginning you’ll be working a bit awkwardly out of sequence, but it’s worth it. […]
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