Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Friday is the traditional movie review day in the press (anyone remember when there were two release days? Movies used to come out on Fridays and Wednesdays). Here’s the NY Times‘ assessment, by A.O. Scott. Upshot: The trouble with baseball movies like “Trouble With the Curve” is that they tempt reviewers to reach for hackneyed […]
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I don’t have high hopes for this one, but is is a baseball movie, so I’m sure I’ll see it (although I never got around to Moneyball while it was in general release). But the reviews for TWTC are starting to come in and they’re mixed. Latinos Post describes it as “Generic Hollywood Fare Trying […]
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The Hardball Times posted this review by David Wade of Yankee Miracles: Life with the Boss and the Bronx Bombers, by former sports executive Ray Negron. Bill Jordan of Baseball Reflections followed in kind.
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Regular followers of the bookshelf know my aversion to discussing fiction. I don’t have enough of a creative writing background to pass critical judgment on the hard work of the novelist. All I can pass on is what I like or dislike. But this summer I was fortunate enough to enjoy back-to-back hits: The Might […]
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Making my regular Amazon run for new baseball e-books, I came across The History of Baseball: The Definitive Learning Guide, published by an outfit called Course Hero and via Charles River Editors. There is no single author or group of authors credited with this title. I have no knowledge of Course Hero, nor have I […]
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Recently finished reading my second baseball novel (!) in the last month; The Greatest Show on Dirt by James Bailey was the first. I’ll be doing reviews of both of them in the near future as my 501 schedule permits. I wanted to contact Joseph Schuster but could find no info either on Facebook nor his […]
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Lax as I’ve been about posting lately, I’ve been worse in the care and feeding of my widgets. So if you cast your eyes rightward, you’ll notice updates to the reading lists (what I just read, what I’m reading now, etc.), podcasts (and I’ll be getting back to those soon, too), and even the Facebook […]
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But will it work for Gil Hodges? In 2010, Danny Peary and Tom Clavin collaborated on Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero. In conversations, Peary made no bones about his desire to see Maris inducted into the Hall of Fame. Is this becoming a cause celebre for the writing team? Their newest project is Gil Hodges: […]
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Conducted my semi-regular scan of new titles. Submitted for your interest. It may seem unfair, but I do tend to judge e-books by their cover, especially when they are offered only in that format. It’s an indication of the time and effort the author/publisher puts into the project. Similarly, I’m basing my opinions strictly on […]
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♦ From the Tulsa World, this on on Robert Fitts’ Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan. Upshot: “It is very well-researched and a balanced account, but it occasionally threatens to sag under the weight of such details. Readers need not be fans of baseball to appreciate the sport […]
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Former MLB second baseman Jeff Kent will be one of the contestants on the new season of Survivor, which begins Spet. 19. I still won’t watch this show.
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Gary Perilloux posted this essay on Full Spectrum Baseball in which he argues that Joseph M. Schuster’s The Might Have Been: A Novel “may just be the Greatest American Baseball Novel ever written. Period.” Discuss.
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♦ The Summer 2012 issue of Jewish Currents features a review by Cynthia Werthamer of Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League, by former IBL hurler Aaron Pribble. Upshot: “While Pribble’s book could do with less foreshadowing…, his retelling of the ups and downs […]
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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
Bits and pieces
August 30, 2012
Time for the occasional declutter of the accumulated links and stories, so here goes. “Dan Barry’s Bottom of the 33rd has won the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, which honors a nonfiction book on the subject of sports.” More here. From the Yogi Berra Museum: Former Yankee star second baseman Bobby Richardson, a cornerstone […]
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