Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
to forget to post about Hank Greenberg‘s 100th birthday, which would have been Jan. 1. Andy Wolf posted this tribute on Dec. 30. Mark Kurlansky, author of The Eastern Stars, is about to release anew biography — Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to be One — from Yale University Press in March. Previous […]
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Who knew the three-time All-star catcher was a writer? I had not heard of his 2007 publication If They Only Knew, but I would definitely like to get my hands on a copy. Which leads to the inevitable question, if we only knew what? According to Wikipedia, that great bastion of scholarship Daulton holds a […]
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Dandy Sandy turns 75 (!) today. Can it really be? I hope I look that good when I’m his age. Or ever. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’m going to refer to previous links about the Dodger (and Jewish) legend from Kaplan’s Korner, my blog about Jews and sports. Because you can never get enough […]
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Bill Lee turns 64 today. The flaky, quirky, “spacey” lefty had an interesting 14-year major league career, to put it mildly, including being called on the carpet by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn for admitting to sprinkling marijuana on his pancakes. Books by and about Lee include: Amazon.com Widgets Also marking a birthday today: “Sunday Teddy” Lyons, […]
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The pride of The Greatest Generation died yesterday at the age of 92. Feller was one of the bona fide star athletes who served with distinction in World War II, sacrificing prime seasons away from the game when they might have been able to find ways around the draft; Feller could easily have claimed status […]
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A whole bunch today, beginning with Fergie Jenkins, the Hall of Fame pitcher, who turns 68. You often read about how dark-skinned Hispanics players such as Robert Clemente or Vic Power were amazed by the prejudice they encountered in the 1950s and 1960s, coming from countries where none existed. I wonder how Jenkins felt, coming […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Dec. 10, at 11 a.m. Title Rank General The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 2 Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh […]
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Anyone else surprised that “Little General” was Johnny Bench‘s nickname? The Hall of Fame catcher turns 63 today. Books on Bench include: From Behind the Plate Catch You Later: The Autobiography of Johnny Bench Catch Every Ball: How to Handle Life’s Pitches In addition, Bo Belinsky was born this date in1936. He collaborated with the […]
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Larry Bowa turns 65 today. The long-time Phillies shortstop (he also played with the Cubs before batting .105 in his final year with the Mets; yeah, thanks for that) was also a short-tempered manager for the Padres and Phils. He wrote two books: Bleep: Larry Bowa Manages in 1988 and Larry Bowa: I Still Hate […]
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The popular Chicago Cubs and White Sox third baseman died Wednesday at the age of 70. At the heyday of my fanhood — 1969 — the Cubs were the hated enemy and Santo was the epitome of the arrogant, self-entitled rival, deeming the Mets unworthy to shine the shoes of the Chicagoans. But later in […]
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Walter Alston was born this date in 1911. He struck out in his only at bat: Sept. 27, 1936 as member of the St. Louis Cardinals against the Chicago Cubs. But he more than made up for that as a Hall of Fame manager for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers. Alston was inducted into the Hall […]
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Bo Jackson turns 48 today. The pop culture icon published Bo Knows Bo, Autobiography of a Ballplayer with Dick Schaap in 1990.
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Hall of Famer Roy Campanella was born this day in 1921. Books about the ill-fated catcher include: His own It’s Good to Be Alive, first published in 1959, a year after the accident that put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella, an in-depth biography […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Nov. 19 at 10 a.m. Title Rank General The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 1 Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton and Tim Keown 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, […]
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Also born this date, Jay Hook, who earned the first of the Mets’ 3,734 victories.
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Baseball lifer George “Birdie” Tebbetts was born on this date in 1912. A catcher, he spent 14 seasons as an active player before taking of the managerial reins of the Cincinnati Redlegs, as they were called in the early 1950s during the Communist scare, as per this Wikipedia entry: “Twice in the 1950s (the McCarthy […]
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Johnny Damon turns 37 today. He’s only 429 hits away from 3,000. Following the 2004 season, it seems there were 429 books written about the Boston Red Sox, on one topic or another, from team profiles, to individual biographies, including Damon’s Idiot: Beating “The Curse” and Enjoying the Game of Life, written with Peter Golenbock. […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Nov. 5 at Noon. Title Rank General The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 1 Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton and Tim Keown 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, […]
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From ESPN.com: Former Detroit Tigers and Cincinnati Reds manager Sparky Anderson has been placed in hospice care at his Thousands Oaks, Calif., home for complications resulting from dementia. Anderson, 76, was one of the first baseball personalities I ever interviewed. It occurred shortly after his book They Call Me Sparky came out in the late […]
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Bob Feller, one of the fastest pitchers in Major League history, turns 92 today. Feller was one of those “Greatest Americans” who served in combat in World War II (as opposed to ballplayers who continued to play, albeit within the confines of military service). He lost more than three prime years. Several sabermetricians have posited […]
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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
