Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer by Robert Fitts. University of Nebraska Press. 256 Pages, $28.95. Fitts — whose previous books on the game in the Land of the Rising Sun include Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball (2008) and the award-winning Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, […]
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Strangers in the Bronx: DiMaggio, Mantle, and the Changing of the Yankee Guard by Andrew O’Toole. Triumph 304 Pages, $25.95 There has been a lot written about the “changing of the guard” when it came to the Commerce Comet replacing the Yankee Clipper, but nothing that approaches the overall depth of this bittersweet tale by […]
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Books have been written about the use of baseball as an imperialist tool by the United States. We send people to foreign countries; they bring baseball with them, and pretty soon the residents of those foreign have embraced the game to a degree even more enthusiastic than back in the good ole U.S.A. Case in […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Picked up an audio copy of Holy Cow: A Novel by David Duchovny, a kinder, gentler answer to Orwell’s Animal Farm (as opposed to a book about Phil Rizzuto). I won’t go into a whole lot of detail about the overall premise. Suffice it to say it’s told — quite entertainingly — from a the […]
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According to a story on the Sports Business Daily website, “Recently retired MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has hired Sandy Montag of IMG as his agent to represent him in selling the rights to a book about his life and baseball. Montag will also represent Selig for speaking engagements, consulting and other matters.” I was under […]
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Crazy how the NY Times posts its stories. A couple of weeks back, I wrote about their lack of baseball book reviews, despite the buzz about some of the bigger titles. So what happens? They published two on-line: Charles Leerhsen’s Ty Cobb bio and Jon Pessah’s baseball business tome. Except the Leerhsen piece appeared in […]
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Who doesn’t like pretty things? Museums, such as the Baseball Hall of Fame, are filled with them. But not everyone can get up to Cooperstown. For them, there are books like A History of Baseball in 100 Objects, by Josh Leventhal. Leventhal — whose previous books on baseball include The World Series: An Illustrated Encyclopedia […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Full disclosure: I have not finished Charles Leerhsen’s new biography, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. The book has generally been getting good reviews. I posted a link to the one in the May 31 issue of the NY Times Sunday book supplement which said, among other things, “[I]f Leerhsen is a mostly effective advocate for […]
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As posted on Bookreporter.com.
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Apropos to my remarks in the previous “Best-Seller” post about the lack of baseball book reviews in the Times… For some reason, the paper posts to its website on Friday reviews that will appear in the book supplement a week hence. That is, the reviews below (at least according to the time stamp) will appear […]
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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
