Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
One of the first women reports to make it into a mens’ locker room, Alison Gordon passed away yesterday at the age of 72. Gordon, who covered the Blue Jays for the Toronto Star, wrote about her experiences in her 19085 memoir, Foul ball!: Five Years in the American League, which is include in 501 Baseball […]
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Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message. So without further ado, here are the top ten baseball books as […]
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Derek Jeter: Excellence and Elegance, compiled and edited by Tyler Kepner. Triumph, 2014. Jeter Unfiltered, by Derek Jeter with photographs by Christopher Anderson. Gallery Books, 2015. How do you tell the story of one of the most iconic players of his generation in a few hundred pages? As the Yankees’ future Hall of Fame shortstop […]
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by Martha Jo Black and Chuck Schoffner. Academy Chicago, 2015. Rather than the blustery “best” or “greatest” that book titles seem to relish, this new biography of what basically amounted to a one-year wonder, is most appropriate. Joe Black, who burst on the scene in 1952 by winning 15 games and saving 15 more to […]
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* Josh Wilker’s forthcoming book, Benchwarmer: An Anxious Dad’s Almanac of Fatherhood and Other Failures gets a thumbs up from Kirkus. Upshot: “This almanac of fatherhood (and other failures) is honest, relatable and humorous—an indispensable read for fathers (and sons) whose joy in life comes not from winning the big game but being alive to […]
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Over due. The baseball community lost one of its real gentlemen when Ernie Banks passed away over the weekend. Banks struck me like a Stan Musial type: a certified Hall of Famer who spent his entire career with one team that didn’t always play that well. He did well enough, though: two consecutive MVP awards […]
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Just like the movies, this is the baseball book awards season. On Monday, I wrote about Kostya Kennedy’s biography Pete Rose: An American Dilemma, winning Spitball Magazine’s Casey award. Now the other shoe has dropped. Mover and Shaker: Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers, & Baseball’s Westward Expansion, by past SABR President Andy McCue was selected as […]
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Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine announced the winner of the 2014 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year is Kostya Kennedy for Pete Rose: An American Dilemma. The showing turned in by Rose was especially impressive given the outstanding field of finalists, which was extended by two books over the normal total of […]
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Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message. So without further ado, here are the top ten baseball books […]
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I frequently wonder about the role of book critics: Must they be students of the topics of which they read and report? Fans? That’s certainly not the case in this piece by Mark Dent of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Dent writes – with my annotations in brackets — The “summer” baseball book could have its own […]
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Submitted for your interest from another semi-regular scan of new titles. 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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There are so many books coming from three publishers, I thought to give them a page of their own. McFarland gets high marks for taking on subjects and people that might otherwise go under the radar. That’s not to say that every book is fantastic, all due respects to the writers, but at least they […]
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The next Moneyball? * A few “inside baseball (business)” pieces coming up: In Pursuit of Pennants: Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball by long-time SABR members Mark Armour and Daniel Leviit. John Pessah adds to this sub-genre with The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball’s Power Brokers. Lonnie Wheeler’s Intangiball: The Subtle […]
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After not reading any baseball books for longer than I can remember (probably just a few months, that tells you a lot about my memory), I happily dove in to the new listings on Amazon. Herewith a sampling of what’s on the horizon. It’s a nice mix of the “comfort food” of baseball lit — […]
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Happy New Year, everyone. Hope nothing but the best comes your way in 2015, including the best baseball books available. Almost done with the non-baseball book and greatly looking forward to catching up on my regular reading, writing, and wrangling authors, filmmakers, and artists into discussing their work on new podcast segments. In the meantime, […]
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Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message. On with the show… As you may have notice in recent weeks, […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message. On with the show… As you may have notice in recent weeks, […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message. On with the show… As you may have notice in recent weeks, […]
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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
Baseball Best-Sellers, Nov. 21
November 21, 2014
Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message. On with the show… Here are the top ten baseball books as […]
Tagged as: Bill James, Cleveland Indians, Derek Jeter, Hardball Times, Mariano Rivera, New York Yankees, Oakland As, San Francisco Giants
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