Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
by Arnold Hano. Da Capo Press, 2004. This is one of those things you always figure you’ll get to, like a New Yorker visiting the Empire State Building or The Statue of Liberty. It will always be there, so you figure you have time. Well, Hano will be receiving the the Hilda Chester Award, which […]
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♦ Macleans, Canada’s version of Time magazine, ran this review of Harvey Araton’s Driving Mr. Yogi: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry, and Baseball’s Greatest Gift. Upshot: Well, there isn’t any per se. “After years of steroid scandals and cold-hearted business decisions, Araton has given us an old-fashioned story about the redemptive power of baseball.” The writer […]
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♦ The Knoxville News published this review of native son R.A. Dickley’s Wherever I Wind Up. Upshot: “t is rare to find a baseball book by an insider that dishes no dirt. It is even rarer to find a professional athlete willing to acknowledge his own mistakes. In “Wherever I Wind Up,” R.A. Dickey reveals […]
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My daughter attends NYU, which is where I eventually learned of this course taught by the school’s president, John Sexton, during a Parent’s Weekend last fall. “Baseball as a Road to God” is this subject of a front page story in today’s New York Times. Hoping to sit in on one of the sessions, I […]
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I have a handful of podcasts I listen to religiously, mostly on my way to work. It’s very ritualistic. I start each Monday with Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. From then on it’s Pardon the Interruption and Extra Hot Great Minis, a scaled down, one-topic version of Extra Hot Great, one of my favorite pop […]
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Believe it or not, today is Opening Day for Major League Baseball. The Seattle Mariners defeated the Oakland Athletics, 3-1 in 11 innings. In Japan. Sigh. Call me old-fashioned, but I remember when the Cincinnati Reds — the first professional team, back in 1869 — always had the honor of playing the first game of […]
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I’m going to take a leap of faith and assume most of you have read Michael Lewis’ neo-classic. But if you haven’t, or are looking for a real steal, there are a couple of outlets where you can buy it for your nook or Kindle for two bits (kids, ask your grandparents. Oh, all right, […]
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One of the benefits for a bibliophile of being a member of the Society for American baseball Research is all the cool publications that are a part of the package. The two primary annual titles are the Baseball Research Journal, which tends to be more numbers-driven, and The National Pastime, which offers a wide range […]
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Robinson was born this date in 1919, which means he would have been 93 today. Sadly, he passed away almost 40 years ago, way too young. It isn’t necessary to repeat all the sacrifices he made, all the doors he opened. One would hope everyone in this country — baseball fan or not — would […]
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The nominations for the Academy Awards were announced this morning and Moneyball came away with a “cycle” of sorts. The unlikely cinematic version of Michael Lewis’ best-seller is up for Best Picture, Best Actor (Brad Pitt), Best Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, and Stan Chervin). UPDATE: Moneyball also […]
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Creamer, author of what many believe to be the first “adult” biography when he published Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, was the subject of this interview with the Baseball: Past and Present blog, an interesting site of which I had heretofore been ignorant. Creamer, a fixture at Sports Illustrated and other publications, is also […]
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Small wonder in that they had to do with Jackie Robinson. Robinson’s teammate, Don Newcombe, recalled ameeting between the two iconic figures for a piece in Time Magazine in 2007: Do you know what Jackie’s impact was? Well, let Martin Luther King tell you. In 1968, Martin had dinner in my house with my family. […]
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A few weeks back I posted an entry about Diane Firstman’s imaginative baseball rendition of The 12 Days of Christmas on her Value Over Replacement Grit blog. Well, she’s at it again, this time deconstructing the classic poem “Casey at the Bat” to see how many times the scenario — home team down 4-2 with […]
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W. P. Kinsella was awarded the 2011 Jack Graney Award, presented by the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame for a “significant contribution to the game of baseball in Canada through a life’s work or for a singular outstanding achievement.” The award is named for one of the first Canadian baseball players to enjoy success in the […]
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In this piece from Slate.com, author (right) and subject (left) discuss what the neo-classic mix of sports and business hath wrought.
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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
Spring cleaning, er, reading
March 7, 2012 · 2 comments
When my wife gave me a kindle for the Hanukka, it was with the understanding that I would bring fewer books into the house. Yeah, that’s not working out too well right about now, as new baseball titles just keep coming. I have been asking for them in Kindle format whenever possible, but it’s not […]
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