Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
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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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Oct. 30 at 1 p.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 […]
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The Hall of Fame slugger and host of the popular Mets post-game show bearing his name, turns 88 today. Kiner is one of those former players employed as a broadcaster to compare contemporary players to those of their (back in the) day. Like many of his fellow announcers, Kiner was known to mangle a few […]
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Hats off to Mr. Brosnan, who penned the first of the “in-season” adult autobios/memoirs with The Long Season in 1960. Like Jim Bouton, whose Ball Four was released in 1970, Brosnan was considered something of a turncoat for “revealing” the secrets of the locker room. And this was without all the sex and foul language! […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of 10 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 22. 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 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael […]
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The other “Chairman of the Board” turns 82 today, a day after the birthday of his Yankee friend and teammate, Mickey Mantle. In his last two seasons with the Yankees, Ford — inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1974 — had a record of 4-9. Subtract that from his career totals and he would […]
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Several high-profile ballplayers share Oct. 20 as a birthday. Tops on the list: Mickey Mantle. There are dozens of books about The Mick. Many of the more recent ones examines his flaws as a person well as his strengths as an athlete, including Jane Leavy’s just-published The Last Boy. Since this book — and by […]
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The Hall of Fame pitcher (and former underwear model) turns 65 today. Palmer published his memoirs — Together We Were Eleven Foot Nine: The Twenty-Year Friendship of Hall of Fame Pitcher Jim Palmer and Orioles Manager Earl Weaver — in 1996.
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Art Shamsky, a favorite of Jewish baseball fans everywhere, turns 69 today. I ran into Shamsky last Sunday at the memorial service for Maury Allen. Still looking good and hoping for a resurrection of professional baseball in Israel; he was manager of the Modi’in Miracle in 2007, the only season for the Israel Baseball League. […]
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Happy birthday, Joe. Can’t believe you’re 70 today. The title of his book — Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud, written with Berry Stainback and published in 1975 — was perfect. He was pretty good — a three time All-Star and Golve Glove winner — but had the bad timing to be on the Yankees […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of 10 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 8. 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 Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams, […]
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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
