Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Given the draft of the script. I’ll watch anything about baseball. Cartoons, documentaries, lousy films (Jackie Robinson was a great ballplayer, but a poor actor). But this draft of the aborted Brad Pitt vehicle would sorely try my patience (Groucho Marx: “Don’t mind if I do. You must try mine sometime.”). Moneyball, the non-fiction neo-classic […]
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I must admit, I agree with the SF Chronicle’s Gwen Knapp in her column where she avers that the book was not meant to be a feature film. In fact, the fate of the movie might have been more dramatic than any material “Moneyball” could have provided. What would have constituted the big moments in […]
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Is it just me, or does that seem like a redundancy? Anyway three all-time favorites are on this list posted to Hoopla.com. And sorry, but as the years go on, I wonder if Ball Four will, in fact, lose its edge.
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books on baseball, that is, at least according to this blogger. The list includes: The Kid from Tomkinsville The Southpaw The Glory of Their Times Stealing Home The Bill James Historical Abstract
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The Henry Wiggen Blog posted this “sort of” review of one component of Mark Harris’ classy trilogy.
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From — where else — the Los Angeles Times.
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Sorry to mix baseball titles, but the Henry Wiggen blog finally reviews Mark Harris’ Bang the Drum Slowly. Upshot: If “The Southpaw” is the baseball version of the Great American Novel, “Bang the Drum Slowly” is the classic American story. In an aside, the writer notes that Robert DeNiro, who played the dying catcher, Bruce […]
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Love finding reviews of baseball books from non-baseball sources. In this case, the Ring Lardner classic from Pundit and Pundette.
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From the June 1 issue of Sports Illustrated, this quote by Scott Hatteberg, who was featured in Micheal Lewis’ book Moneyball, soon to be a major (?) motion picture: Former A’s first baseman, on being cast as himself in the film Moneyball: “I don’t know how you can screw up playing yourself, but I’m afraid […]
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AskMen.com, Canadian version, recently posted this entry on summer reading, including Moneyball Juiced Baseball Prospectus 2009 The Catcher Was a Spy: The Msyterious Life of Moe Berg Ball Four (at number 5? You kiddin’ me?) Bang the Drum Slowly Perfect I’m Not (I’d like to meet the marleting genius who decided that changing the title […]
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Patrick Saunders of DenverPost.com also recommends this excellent book by the late David Halberstam.
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Every issue of the classic publication is available through Google books. The first issue: July 1945. Cover price: 15 cents. Tag line: “64 Pages — and Every Word Baseball!” Thanks to John Zajc and Rob Neyer for the item.
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I never had a brother, so I don’t know what it’s like to be in someone’s shadow. Imagine Dom DiMaggio. He had a wonderful 11-year career with the Boston Red Sox, finishing with a .298 career batting average and a seven-time all-star. But there was Joe, always in the spotlight. Dom passed away yesterday at […]
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Don Amore from the Hartford Courant published this piece, pursuant to all the hubbub about the release yesterday of the Rodriguez biography. I have absolutely no quibble with his selection of Ball Four as his pick for the Babe Ruth/Hank Aaron/Cy Young of baseball books. But when he includes Spakry Lyle’s The Bronx Zoo among […]
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WickedLocal.com, a New England outfit, ran this piece on Ernest Lawrence Thayer, creator of the classic “Casey at the Bat,” which has spaened dozens of editions and collections of parodies. This one isn’t read very well, but the video is kind of cool.
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I may have done this one before, but I came across it in my Google alerts, so here we go. Tim Morris of the University of Texas at Arlington, has compiled this massive list: This Guide to Baseball Fiction is a combination of bibliographic checklist and evaluative critical guide to over 1,000 works of baseball […]
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The Henry Wiggen Blog (“Sports, Journalism, Kansas City and everything in between”) features several review of classic baseball titles. Among them: Prophet of the Sandlots, one of the best books about the scouting system The Celebrant, Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s novel of the New York Giants of Mr. McGraw Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella, the basis […]
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This one comes from the Fredericksburg Times.
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The Chicago Blog posted this brief piece considering a couple of off-the-beaten-path baseball titles, including Professor Baseball and Veeck as in Wreck, both of which present the game as belonging to the common man, rather than elite athletes and multi-millionaires.
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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
* TWIBB — June 26
June 26, 2009
This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, June 19. 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 The Science of Hitting, Williams 4 As They See […]
Tagged as: baseball best-sellers, baseball books
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