Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
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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Here’s one way to do it: Reprint something from your archives and call it a “classic.” That’s what the Christian Science Monitor does with this 1985 review of The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball.
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The back page of The New York Times Book Review features a full page advertisement from Bauman Rare Books. I usually don’t pay attention because as much as I lvoe ’em, they’re out of my league, to borrow from a famous title. But a photo of Joe DiMaggio caught my eye and sure enough there […]
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It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 25 years since we first heard about Sidd Finch, the promising Mets hurler who threw in excess of 160 miles per hours, played the French horn, and wore one combat boot on the mound. It may have been nothing but a very elaborate April Fool’s joke courtesy of […]
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From mentalfloss.com: If there’s one author who bridges the cultural divide between the United States and Japan, it’s Haruki Murakami. The 60-year-old Kyoto native started writing relatively late in life, at age 29, and it was America’s national pastime that inspired him. While attending a baseball game in Tokyo, Murakami saw American Dave Hilton hit […]
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From The Henry Wiggen Blog, this review of the W.P. Kinsella classic and Eric Role Greenberg’s novel.
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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
* The joy of sections
April 6, 2009
One of the major complaints from fans and (especially) non-fans is that the games take too long. Don’t look at it as a lot of down time; instead perceive it as a chance to catch up on your reading. That’s why I love compilations such as those published by The Washington Post‘s Thomas Boswell and […]
Tagged as: Roger Angell, Thomas Boswell
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