Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
The man responsible — for better or worse — for the astronomical salaries baseball players receive these days, died this morning at the age of 95. He had been battling cancer for more than a year. Miller was one of the most powerful men in sports during his tenure as head of the players union. […]
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♦ Bill Jordan at Baseball Reflections posted this on The Baseball Hall of Shame: The Best of Blooperstown. Upshot: “With the book being built around blurbs, instead of lengthy stories, it is a quick read and would be something that is easy to browse through. One might even call this a good book to read […]
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The baseball “lifer” passed away on Nov. 8 at the age of 95. Here’s the NY Times obit, written by Richard Goldstein. MacPhail published his autobiography — My 9 Innings: An Autobiography of 50 Years in Baseball — in 1989. A new copy goes for about $150 on Amazon. in 2000, G. Richard McKelvey published […]
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♦ The Washington Post published this piece on Tony La Russa’s memoir, One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season. ♦ Better late than never: It seems the Seattle Post-Intelligencer finally got around to posting a review of Zack Hample’s 2007 publication, Watching Baseball Smarter: […]
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My review of the new Tony La Russa memoir appears on the latest Bookreporter.com and is reprinted for your convenience below: Tony La Russa is a baseball lifer. He began his career in the minors; had an unproductive stint as a major leaguer, batting .199 over six seasons as a utility infielder; and made a […]
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♦ The Atlantic published this piece by Luke Epplin on Tony La Russa’s new book, The Last Strike. The main complaint in the piece seems to be that a) La Russa doesn’t dish the dirt very much; and b) his role as a great strategist may be well-deserved, but too much detail doesn’t make for […]
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The director of A League of Their Own recently published My Mother Was Nuts. Naturally the cover caught my eye. So now I feel I have to read the damn thing, just to find out why — of all the things she could have worn for the book art, she decided to go with catcher’s […]
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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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One of the good things about having a Kindle or Nook is the ability to read sample of a book before buying. Makes sense; if you were at a bookstore, you’d probably leaf through at least a few pages (although I once read an entire book over the course of a few lunch hours. That’s […]
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Maybe it’s just the sports new cycles, but it seems there was a lot of emphasis on how young many of this year’s All-Stars were, juxtaposed with Chipper Jones, who is probably making his last appearance in the summer classic. (Did anyone else think his locker room “pep talk” was uncomfortable and stagey?) It occurred […]
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This spring, Triumph released memoirs/bios about Oil Can Boyd and Willie Mays Aikens. All props to these guys for being members of the select fraternity of those who made it to the Majors. But they really “deserve” books about them? Boyd was 78-77 over a 10-year career while Aikens played eight seasons (done by 31) […]
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♦ Baseball Prospectus chose an odd assortment for this list of “10 Favorite Baseball Books”‘ which I suppose could be considered min-reviews. ♦ The Boston Globe published this review of They Call Me Oil Can: Baseball, Drugs, and Life on the Edge, by Oil Can Boyd with Mike Shalin. As regular readers of the Bookshelf […]
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My annual spring baseball book roundup appears on Bookreporter.com. Titles include: Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball, by R.A. Dickey and Wayne Coffey Turning Two: My Journey to the Top of the World and Back with the New York Mets, by Bud Harrelson and Phil Pepe Driving Mr. […]
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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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