Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, by David Maraniss, narrated by the author. There was a multiple full-page advertisement in the Nov. 18 sports section of The New York Times urging that Clemente’s number 21 be retired from the game, a la Jackie Robinson in 1997. The first Latino superstar, the sponsors […]
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From an August, 2006 episode. You can find the transcript and listen to the program here. http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm080406d.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Actor Edward Herrmann made almost as unlikely a baseball player in A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story, a 1978 made-for-TV movie as Tony Perkins did in Fear Strikes Out, but he makes an excellent narrator on Jonathan Eig’s 2005 biography of the Iron Horse. Here’s a slide show/audio excerpt from the book: […]
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Bonds, BALCO, & the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports, By Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, read by Scott Brick (Unabridged) Listen here: Bonds has said he would boycott the Hall of Fame if they displayed his 756th home run ball defaced with an asterisk. Pardon the Interruption hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon are […]
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NPR’s Fresh Air replayed this May 2007 interview with Costner to mark the release of his latest movie, Mr. Brooks, on DVD. The interviewer is with Dave Davies. Costner discusses his love for the game (not coincidentally the title of his trilogy of baseball films; and no, The Upside of Anger, in which he plays […]
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Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, By Robert Creamer, narrated by Tom Parker (Unabridged) Listen here: The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe , by Leigh Montiville, narrated by Scott Brick (Unabridged) Listen here: These two biographies, written about 30 years apart, have one thing in common besides their subject matter: Both are […]
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Baseball in ’41, by Robert Creamer, narrated by Tom Parker (Unabridged) Hear an excerpt: When the Boys Came Back: Baseball in 1946, by Frederick Turner, narrated by Brian Emerson (Unabridged) Hear an excerpt: These books span the WWII years from an interesting angle. Creamer’s book is a foreshadowing, examining the year of The Streak and […]
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Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season, by Jonathan Eig, narrated by Richard Allen (Unabridged) I wasn’t too fond of this one, but maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance. I found the narrator’s style too slow and overly dramatic. Here’s a sample. http://boss.streamos.com/download/audible/content/bk/tant/000398/BK_TANT_000398_sample.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple […]
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by Larry King; read by the author. This is one of those cases where having the author read his own work doesn’t (work, that is). When speaking extemporaneously, King is a fine entertainer. But reading from a script makes him sound like, well, he’s reading from a script, reporting someone else’s memories, rather than his […]
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Written by George Vecsey, narrated by Alan Nebelthau (unabridged) In a Fall 2006 feature I did for Bookreporter.com, I wrote: Veteran columnist George Vecsey offers a quick recap of historical highlights of the national pastime in BASEBALL: A HISTORY OF AMERICA’S FAVORITE GAME. The slim volume — a mere 250-plus pages — barely touches on […]
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When it comes to listening to books, I prefer unabridged versions, especially if I haven’t read the book book. That way I don’t have to worry about what I might be missing from the printed page. I also appreciate the efforts made, in most cases, by the authors to do their own narration. After all, […]
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The podcast for This is Audible features baseball this week. In addition to a lengthy interview with Joshua Prager, author of The Echoing Green, and a reading by Roger Angell of his piece “Game Six” at a Symphony Space program, the podcast runs down the top ten baseball audio books. Not all the titles are […]
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The second production of short baseball fiction from Symphony Space, which originally aired Oct. 12, 2007 by Public Radio International, featured: Various authors, Baseball Haiku, read by Alec Baldwin and Isaiah Sheffer (from Baseball Haiku: The Best Haiku Ever Written About the Game, W.W. Norton). Frankly, I couldn’t always catch the 17 syllables that make […]
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Thanks to the powers that be for producing two sessions of top notch baseball stories read at Manhattan’s Symphony Space. The stories in this section, which aired on Sept. 28, 2007 by Public Radio International, include: James T. Farrell, “My Grandmother Goes to Comiskey Park,” read by John Shea (from My Baseball Diary, Southern Illinois […]
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This is Audible, an annoyingly double-entendred podcast, devoted its July 10 episode to several baseball audio books,including: The Big Bam, an unabridged version of Leigh Montville’s 2006 biography on Babe Ruth. After an excerpt from narrator Scott Brick, the podcast’s host, Josephine Reed, conducts a telephone interview with the author that sounds as if it […]
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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
