Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Mark, I dare you to show yourself enough respect to offer the real story to your fans. I dare you to do what Canseco did to get this whole dog-and-pony show started in the first place and write your own book. Put down the truth. Put down YOUR truth, whatever it might be. Subject yourself […]
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There’s been a lot of talk about what to do with the statistics from the Steroids Era. Some want them expunged from the record books. Others, like Tony Kornheiser, want a special note on any Hall of Fame plaque, bringing into account the possibility (probability?) that said honored player partook of PED. My take is: […]
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Our favorite game show host, Peter Sagal, included the recent shocking news about Mark McGwire on the latest episode of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. In the “Who’s Carl This Time” feature, sidekick Carl Kassel offered the quote: “I used very very low dosages. There was no way I wanted to look like Lou Ferrigno […]
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I don’t know what else there is to say about McGwire. Some, like Joe Posnanski (twice) and my literary hero, Tony Kornheiser, are more forgiving. Mr. Tony spoke about the “confessions of Mark McGwire” on both Pardon the Interruption and his eponymous radio program on ESPN 980 in DC. Others, like Ken Rosenthal, are much […]
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Kerel Cooper, who hosts OntheBlack, (“NY Mets Video Blog Providing News, Opinions and Analysis”), has a thought that applies to the entire organization: Reading is FUNdamental. In this video, he suggests the Mets’ would do well to devote part of their off-season (their long off-season) to boning up on the game via these titles: Getting […]
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Jewish for “Happy Holiday,” As Jews around the world gather tonight to mark the holiest day on the calendar, George Vecsey offered this column in today’s Sunday Times. Instead of putting the game at 8 p.m. — prime time, as the networks call it — ESPN and Major League Baseball are accommodating thousands of fans […]
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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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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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(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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Well not me, specifically, but to this guy, Seth Magalaner, the “sports literature examiner” at examiner.com, one of the hyper-local websites. Magalaner has also written on some other baseball books, including Jeff Pearlman’s The Rocket that Fell to Earth and Allan Barra’s Berra bio (say that five times fast).
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The legendary Detroit Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell published this piece praising the improved quality of baseball literature in his Free Press column of Aug. 16. Among the titles mentioned (just to name a few) are Jonathan Eig’s Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First […]
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According to Bill James, those science fiction books we’ve read for generations about “building” superior humans is never far from he truth. In this blog entry by Dan Steinberg on The Sporting News website, James opines that “steroids serve the function of prolonging youth, that fighting aging and death has been one of civilization’s greatest […]
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Been meaning to do this since the beginning of the season. The best laid plans, and all that. Anyway, the missus has been complaining that she keeps tripping over these (mostly) thick volumes, so here goes. The volumes share a theme: analyzing the previous year. For some, however, this is only done as a predictor […]
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We might hate the man, for what he did to himself and what he did to besmirch the (relative) cleanliness of the game, but give Jose Canseco his due. He was right about about a lot of things, including players who used. Jonathan Eig, author of a biography of Lou Gehrig — the anti-Canseco — […]
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Bruce Weber, author of As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires (one of my top three books of the year), published this piece in The New York Times’ Week in review section, comapring the roles of arbiters in the legal system and on the baseball diamond. “Have you read Roe v. […]
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I participated in a survey of the “best” baseball fiction and non-fiction books from the Hardball Cooperative site. It was an honor to be included with such learned contributors. Of course, one person’s meat is another’s poison; the comment’s made to the Baseball Think Factory, to which a link was posted, indicates that quite clearly. […]
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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 Bouton-Canseco connection
January 28, 2010
Newsday’s Mark Herrmann tries to make a literary one between the author of the seminal Ball Four with Juiced and Vindicated. I agree with his observation that both former ballplayers (actually Bouton came out with his book while he was still in the Majors) were considered ” pariah[s] among baseball people for having taken aim […]
Tagged as: Jim Bouton, Jose Canseco, Newsday
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