Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Since the whole baseball card scenario has changed since I was a kid, I now look forward to the baseball preview issues from ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated as harbingers of the impending season. ESPN arrived yesterday, and quite frankly, it’s a bit disappointing. In the […]
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We’ve been hearing about Jay McGwire’s book about his brother, Mark, for the past several months. And I’m sure it will get plenty of press. Only not here. I’m a bit tired of all these secondary personages trying to make a buck off their parents, husband, wife, partner, or sibling by publishing a book. Some […]
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I say “semi” because I’m promoting the work of others as well. Just received a copy of the Yankees 2010 Annual from Maple Street Press. Part yearbook, part magazine, it features the usual player profiles, as well as some minor league and historical background stuff. My articlem, “Koshering the Yankees,” about Yankees Fantasy Camp, an […]
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Here’s to the Class of 2010. And I don’t mean the newest Hall of Famers. How cool is it that this year marks the release of biographies on some of the true icons of the game? The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, by Howard Bryant The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End […]
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I was honored by the request to pen the foreword for Jews and Baseball, Vol. 2: The Post-Greenberg Years, 1949-2008, by Burton and Benita Boxerman and published by McFarland. The first volume, subtitled Entering the American Mainstream, 1871-1948, was published by McFarland in 2007. Like its predecessor, this new “must-have” serves as a thorough resource […]
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“The Hawk” was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame today. Now get gets to add that to his autograph. Dawson released an autobio in 1994 (with Tom Bird) that was published by Zondervan, a religious house, ostensibly for kids. Look for a new title soon. From the Hall of Fame press release (with […]
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Twenty years ago, next January 31, The National Sports Daily made its debut. In the pre-Internet days, the mission statement of this publication was to provide readers with as much information as quickly and well-written as possible, taking a swipe at the weekly Sporting News (less so Sports Illustrated). Those lending their name to the […]
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Their official spring-summer 2010 catalog isn’t online yet, but Bloomsbury is printing one new title and a 2009 title with a new afterword. The new title is Charlie Finley: The Life of Baseball’s Super Showman, a joint effort by G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius, slated for a July release. From the catalog: Before […]
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“But the most amazing thing of all: I get paid for doing this” (the closing lines for one of the comedian’s songs during his heyday in the late 1970s). I bring it up because, once again, it goes to the folly of using sports pundits as a source of reliable information. At least when it […]
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, October 9. Title Rank General The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski 1 Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s […]
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So I went back to the baseball publications that came out prior to opening day. These included only national publications (i.e., no newspapers that might show favoritism for the home team): Baseball America, USA Today Sports Weekly, Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine, Athlon, Lindy’s, The Sporting News (which took over my old pals, Street and […]
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, September 25. Title Rank General The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 2 Game […]
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The Hardball Cooperative now features a “book club” to discuss those watershed titles on the national pastime. This month, they take up the classic Ball Four. A few excerpts from the essay by James Bailey. Ball Four changed both baseball and sportswriting, as Bouton went where most had feared to tread. He named names. He […]
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I was doing some research about Allan Roth, the Stephen Hawking of statisticians and came across this article (ostensibly) written by Branch Rickey for LIFE magazine back in the 1940s, courtesy of Baseballthinkfactory.com. Rickey, ever the innovator himself, credits Roth with a new set of numbers by which to judge the players, including on base […]
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, September 11. Title Rank General The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, Posnanski 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Games, Lewis 2 The Yankee Years, Torre and […]
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These are the only professions where you can be wrong a good portion of the time and still keep your job. Phil Taylor writes about this phenomenon in the Sept. 7 issue of Sports Illustrated. Even though he’s writing about football, it’s still germane. How many baseball genius picked the Mets to at least get […]
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Former NY Times baseball writer Murray Chass takes on the subject of anonymous sources in his most recent column. This issue came up in baseball books a few times this year, most notably Serena Roberts’ biography on Alex Rodriguez. Critics took her to task for using A.S. and dubious testimonials about the ballplayer’s use of […]
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This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, August 21. Title Rank General The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, Posnanski 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis 2 The Yankee Years, Torre and […]
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(to borrow a film title). We all know the difficulties the newspaper industry are going through. I look at the sports section for the Star-Ledger and find stories take from the NY Daily News. Reporters and columnists are being bought out. So I guess it should come as no surprise to learn that the “Sport […]
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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
* Time for Times
April 11, 2010
A couple of book-related items in today’s New Yotk Times sports section: In the print edition, Tim Wendel wrote “They Could Throw That Speedball,” as part of the “Spotlight” column, about the difficulties in coming up with the definitive answer to the question, “who was the fastest pitcher in history?” With all due respect to […]
Tagged as: Dixie Walker, Maury Allen, New York Times, Susan Walker, Tim Wendel
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