Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Baseball Reflections posted this review of Ozzie’s School of Management: Lessons from the Dugout, the Clubhouse, and the Doghouse.
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If you’re so inclined, skip the best-selling edition (Fifty Shades of Grey, anyone?) and dig into this: The 2012-16 Collective Bargaining Agreement. Hours of endless entertainment. Or you can wait for the movie to come out. (Hey, if they did it for Moneyball…)
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Louisiana Voice (Tagline: “Politics at its worst!”) posted this review of Dirty Rice: A Season in the Evangeline League, by Gerald Duff. Upshot: “If you are a fan of the grand old game and you are into baseball lore, this book is for you” (isn’t that kind of the same thing?). Slim pickings today, folks.
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I was tooling around for new baseball book reviews and came across this from The Advocate, a website of “news, arts, & events from Berkshire & and Bennington Counties.” Ever craved a good book and just not been inspired by anything you see? Or felt annoyed that you bought a book that was merely so-so? […]
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What does this say about society when a couple of guys wishing to raise $6,000 to fund their graphic novel about baseball players and flesh-eating monsters get more than 1,100 folks to pledge more than $38K…with 25 days left to go!
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A hamsa is the Jewish symbol for protection. Although I know my daughter doesn’t cotton to such gestures, I have her one before she started college. Here’s one “featuring” Hank Greenberg that appears in an on-line baseball magazine published by EephusLeague.com, wonderfully eclectic baseball entity for the artistically oddball items of the game. The navigation […]
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MLB Reports reported on David Stinson’s Deadball: A Metaphysical Baseball Novel. Upshot: “…David Stinson accomplished his mission. I read. I learned. I experienced. I thought. I questioned the baseball past and starting looking to my baseball future. I am. Therefore baseball is the answer. The Metaphysics of Baseball. Welcome to Deadball.” The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion […]
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My review of Dan Ewald’s new book, Sparky and Me: My Friendship with Sparky Anderson and the Lessons He Shared About Baseball and Life, appears on Bookreproter.com. It appears below for your convenience: A caveat before we begin. When I first started as a freelancer, I was asked to do an interview with Sparky Anderson […]
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One of the “problems” working on my book is that I haven’t had as much time to read other books. Several authors have been kind enough to send me their work and I apologize for be so slow to get to them and hope to remedy that in the near future. At the moment, I’m […]
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A periodic attempt to catch up on recent items and links. ♦ I love this entry by SB Nation’s Grant Brisbee on the 17-inning game between the Red Sox and Orioles on May 6 because it’s so damn literary, comparing the sportswriter’s hyperbole to the epic storyteller. ♦ And this one brief from The Hardball […]
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♦ Macleans, Canada’s version of Time magazine, ran this review of Harvey Araton’s Driving Mr. Yogi: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry, and Baseball’s Greatest Gift. Upshot: Well, there isn’t any per se. “After years of steroid scandals and cold-hearted business decisions, Araton has given us an old-fashioned story about the redemptive power of baseball.” The writer […]
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♦ In its Sunday edition, the Boston Globe published this roundup of sports book reviews, including A People’s History of Baseball by Mitchell Nathanson and Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick by Paul Dickson. Thumbs up for both books. ♦ The Lemuria Bookstore Blog offers mini-reviews for three baseball novels: The Art of Fielding, The Might […]
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♦ The London Free Press (Ontario) published this piece on Calico Joe. Upshot: Calico Joe has home run power. The baseball portions, particularly the first 100 pages or so, are more delicious than a Fenway frank. But Grisham saves his heaviest hitting in the 198-page Calico Joe for the second half, where push comes to […]
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So, back to bidness. ♦ The Hardball Times reviewed Great Hitting Pitchers, published by the Society for American Baseball Research. ♦ Baseball Reflections posted this on Major League Dads: Baseball’s Best Players Reflect on the Fathers Who Inspired Them to Love the Game. ♦ I don’t know if this really counts as a review, but […]
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[Note: My spring baseball roundup appears on Bookreporter.com and is reposted here as individual reviews for your convenience.] Jim Abbott tells an old-fashioned tale of hard work, dedication, and refusing to give up in Imperfect: An Improbable Life, co-written by Tim Brown. Born without a right hand, Abbott nevertheless gained success as an outstanding athlete. […]
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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
