Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
The Athens (GA) Banner Gazette published this piece on Brissie, the subject of Ira Berkow’s The Corporal Was a Pitcher. The former major leaguer will be at the Borders on Alps Rod in Athens on Aug. 22 at 1 p.m. For information, call 706-583-8647.
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Henderson became the latest first-ballot Hall of Famer this year. What a day May 1, 1991 was: Henderson becomes the all-time stlen base cham, and Nolan Ryan tosses his seventh and final no-hiter. Henderson took some criticism because of his “I-am-the-greatest” boast, while Ryan quietly accepted the accolades for his accomplishment. You just know a […]
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Wife and daughter are at the Sawx-Tigers game at the moment, so I thought it appropriate to haul these three reviews out of mothballs. All appeared in A Red Sox Journal, published by The Buffalo Head Society in the late 1990s. * * * Murder at Fenway Park, by Troy Soos. Kensington Publishing: NY. 1994 […]
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(With apologies to Irving Berlin…) Earlier this week, The New York Times ran this piece about the life (or lack thereof) of New York Mets groundskeeper Dan Cunningham. It reminding me of several interesting books about the people behind the scenes who are essential to the smooth production of a game on many levels, from […]
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, August 7. Title Rank General Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Appel 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis 2 Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, Tye 3 The Yankee Years, Torre and […]
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For me, as a freelance writer, anyway. My first major published piece was a review of Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball, by Harvey Frommer for Elysian Fields Quarterly in 1993, which you’ll find after the break. I wax nostalgic because I learned at the recent SABR Convention that EFQ might be forced to ceases publication […]
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, July 17. Title Rank General Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, Tye 1 Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Appel 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis 3 The Yankee Years, Torre and […]
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The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime, by Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O’Keeffe, and Christian Red. Knopf, 2009. In case you haven’t been paying attention, the topic du an in baseball lit is steroids/PED. No less than four major titles consider the science and those who use performance […]
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The Revolutionary Reign of Bud Selig By Andrew Zimbalist (Wiley, 2007) The review appears in the current edition of SABR’s Baseball Research Journal.
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by Larry Tye (Random House). As appears on Bookreporter.com.
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, July 3. Title Rank General Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, Tye 1 The Yankee Years, Torre and Verducci 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis 3 As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the […]
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Larry Tye’s new biography has generated renewed interst in Paige’s own (purported) autobio. There are two versions of Jane Leavy’s book on Sandy Koufax, the first abridged (6 hours, 14 minutes), narrated by Robert Pinsky (his named is listed, but it dosn’t sound like a male voice on the sample); the latter, unabridged (almost 10 […]
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Dover Publications, under the direction of contributing editor Paul Dickson, has just begun a series of classic books on sports with an emphasis on baseball titles, which are running about 3:1 over other sports. The line will be varied to include fiction but its early emphasis is on autobiography and oral history. Connie Mack’s My […]
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The Christian Science Monitor published this review of Larry Tye’s well-received biography of the Negro League legend. Upshot: It’s about time somebody wrote a good biography of Satchel Paige, the great baseball pitcher, personality, showman, and entrepreneur. In Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, journalist Larry Tye has done just that. Likewise, […]
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The American Spectator published this review of Curt Smith’s new book, emblematic of an increasing sentiment. Upshot: Unfortunately, Smith gives us a wealth of good information in a pedestrian writing style, clipped and choppy and occasionally incoherent. He sometimes changes subject in the middle of a paragraph. There are quotes where it’s hard to tell […]
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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
* In praise of baseball books
August 19, 2009 · 2 comments
The legendary Detroit Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell published this piece praising the improved quality of baseball literature in his Free Press column of Aug. 16. Among the titles mentioned (just to name a few) are Jonathan Eig’s Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First […]
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