Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Roger Clemens and the Rage for Baseball Immortality, by Jeff Pearlman. Harper, 2009. Over the last several years, almost every baseball fan — and a lot of non-fans as well — have felt a sense of betrayal. Their heroes have feet of clay; the emperor has no clothes. What makes the situation all the more […]
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Dermont McEvoy of Publishers Weekly published the magazine’s annual baseball roundup. No surprise, but this year’s selections are heavy on the “bad boy” books, including Selena Robert’s A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez (April, Harper Collins). PW contacted Roberts’s editor at HarperCollins, senior v-p/ executive editor David Hirshey. Hirshey, who in the past has […]
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Not quite a review, not quite an author profile, this piece from the Boston Herald is sort of a news story about the upcoming title. The focus starts with the altercation between Ramirez and Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick, “the final nail in No. 24’s coffin in Boston.”
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From our friend Greg Spira comes this link to LibraryJournal.com’s annual baseball feature. Among the usual share of biographies and memoirs, histories, and social commentaries are such themes as: Yet another biography about Yogi Berra, this one by homonymic author Allen Barra, and one on Walter O’Malley by Michael D’Antonio Ira Berkow’s bio of Lou […]
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What’s one more in-depth profile of a major star between friends? Here’s one about Manny Ramirez, who remains untainted with the steroids brush. ( Isn’t it terrible that pretty much any slugger from here on out will be looked at with one cocked eyebrow?) Becoming Manny: Inside the Life of Baseball’s Most Enigmatic Slugger, by […]
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According to an Associated Press story, …publication of Selena Roberts’ A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez has been moved up from May 19 to April 14 as scrutiny builds on the New York Yankees slugger after he acknowledged using banned substances from 2001-2003 while playing for the Texas Rangers. The item also notes that […]
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How many of us were aware that Selena Roberts of Sports Illustrated has a book on A-Rod published by Harper Collins due to be released in May? Here’s my cynicism coming through again: All the to-do about Torre’s book, written with Tom Verducci, another well-respected SI writer, comes out when there’s a lull in the […]
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So what do you think: will the reports of A-Rod on steroids help the sale of Joe Torre’s book? Not that it needs much in the way of a push, according to this piece in the New York Daily News. A suspicious person would wonder about the timing of the announcement. After all, it’s been […]
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Henry Aaron — whom some believe is still the real all-time home run king — turns 75 today. Where does the time go? Aaron has been the subject of many books over the years, quite a few of which came out in 1974-75, as he was approaching Ruth’s record. I still have baseball magazines from […]
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This is the time of year when home gardeners (of which I am one) look forward to receiving their seed catalogs. I also enjoy getting the latest from the publishing world. Today I received the Ivan R. Dee catalog, which includes the following baseball titles: Catcher, by Peter Morris — The author of such neo-classics […]
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Pardon the Interruption led of it’s Jan. 22 show with a report on Jay McGwire’s ratting out his brother Mark with his own tell-all book. Fortunately, that leads off the show, so you don’t have to watch the entire excerpt.
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The two newest members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Henderson is already the subject / “author” of a couple of books, but I bet it won’t be long before we have a Rice title in book stores everywhere.
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Hal Chase and the Mythology of the Game, by Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella (SportsClassic Books, 2004) as reviewed on Seamheads.com. Upshot: This volume is tremendously researched and the documentation presented from various newspapers hands the reader a first-hand impression that the interpretations of an author could never convey 90 years after the fact. It […]
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Rick Cleveland’s biography (published by Lemuria Press) of Boo Ferriss, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox from 1945-50, as glowingly reviewed in the Clarksdale (MS) Press Register. Ferriss, a Mississippi product, won 21 and 25 games in his first two major league seasons, 12 the next year and never in double figures again.
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Been receiving some publisher’s catalogs recently. Here are a few 2009 titles to look forward to: >> As mentioned previously, Joe Torre and Tom Verducci have collaborated on the manager’s autobio, coming next month from Random House. >> Bloomsbury will release a behind-the-scenes look at the machinations of baseball’s Valhalla in Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues, […]
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It took me quite awhile to discern that “W2W4,” a staple of ESPN The Magazine, means “what to watch for.” There. Now you know. So this W2W4 regards Mort Zachter’s upcoming book Gil Hodges: The Man Behind the Miracle, to be will be published by the University of Nebraska Press. Hodges, the powerful Brooklyn Dodgers […]
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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
* Problems with the new Clemens bio? Here we go again?
March 13, 2009
This item from The New York Times casts another shadow over a new book. In The Rocket Who Fell to Earth, Jeff Pearlman’s new biography on Roger Clemens, the author reports an account offered by an unnamed Yankee episode in which Brian Cashman purportedly took Jason Giambi to task for poor performance by shouting at […]
Tagged as: Brian Cashman, Jason Giambi, Jeff Pearlman, PED, Roger Clemens, steroids
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