Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
the more I realize I don’t. Followers of this blog are well aware of my aversion to reviewing fiction. Doesn’t mean I don’t like a good novel now and then (emphasis on “good”), just that I don’t feel qualified to write about it it because I find critiquing it subjective. But I never realized how […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I’m all for newspapers and that includes student newspapers. Here’s a review form the Royal Purple News, from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater about a “local” baseball novel, It Happened in Wisconsin, by Ken Moraff Hmm, haven’t even heard of this one — Just Out of Reach: The 1980s New York Yankees, by Greg Prato — […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Last month I received a copy of Chasing Dreams, the companion volume to the baseball exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History. Thumbing through it, I found this portrait of Bernard Malamud, author of The Natural, one of the highest regarded baseball novels of all time. A few days afterwards, the cover story […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
They’re starting to come in hot and heavy. Witness: John Rosengren, author of the The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball’s Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption, was arecent guest on WBUR’s Only a Game. OAG‘s host, Bill Littlefield included it in a trio of books […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Or something like that. When I was writing 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die, one of the things I had to deal with was going, hat in hand, to ask people I respected to write those little blurbs/advance praise things. Now I’m the one being asked, and it’s pretty flattering I must […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
by Robert B. Parker, 1975, Houghton Mifflin. I loved the TV series Spenser for Hire, based on Parker’s crime novels. Then I started reading the books and I became addicted. But not in the way you’re addicted to delicious potato chips or similar things that start out as enjoyable until one day you discover you’re […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
With Kevin Youkilis trading places with new Yankees acquisition Masahiro Tanaka of the Rakuten Golden Eagles in Japan, I was curious as to how he would adjust to the new culture. Sometimes it work, as in the case of Warren Cromartie; sometimes it doesn’t, as was the case for Jake Elliot (although he did, finally, […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I belong to a Baseball Books group on Facebook. Every now and then, a member will post an item heretofore unknown to me. That was the case today when this one came up: Published in 1964 by Paul Molloy, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, A Pennant for the Kremlin seems to fit in perfectly […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Roger Kahn’s The Seventh Game is available for the Kindle for at least the rest of today. Another giveaway is a PDF download of the 2013 Guide to Mental Performance in Baseball, offered by The Baseball Zone. You have to give them your name and email first, though. You’re welcome.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Trying to clear out my mailbox o’ links by the end of the year. USA Today had high praise for The Kid, allowing that “chances are, no “Teddy Ballgame” biography will ever match up with Ben Bradlee Jr.’s new and exhaustive book about baseball’s greatest hitter.” (Here’s a 10-year-old’s take on the book. He must […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The exemplary author‘s World Series novel is available free for the Kindle for the rest of the day. Here’s a review of that (one coupled with Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe) from the July 25, 1982 edition of The New York Times by Daniel Okrent.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Can’t figure out the maze of links for this one. The Campaign for the American Reader posted this item posted by Marshal Zeringue on “Five top works of baseball fiction,” according to Leigh Montville, the author of two wonderful biographies on Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. The initial offering is The Brothers K by David James […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
One person’s opinion on “A few baseball books to extend the season.” Really? That’s all you could come up with? IMHO, one of the nice things about 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die — which includes entries about the three titles in the aforementioned piece — is that it lets you, the […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Novelists Mick Cochrane and Michael Joyce will be the featured speakers at the Larkin Square Author Series, discussing the links between writing and sports. The program will be held at Filling Station Restaurant at Larkin Square, 745 Seneca St. Buffalo, NY, from 5-6:30 p.m. From the Buffalo News announcement: The two baseball-related novels written by […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Last month, Baseball Nation posted this entry about baseball-themed movie posters, even if the movies weren’t about the game itself, which led to some semantic reservations by yours truly. This time they come out and say that these are “The top 10 baseball scenes (in non-baseball movies)” The piece, by Jim Baker, is especially timely […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Normally I don’t deal with books written specifically for young readers, but this review of Zombie Baseball Beatdown by Paolo Bacigalupi was pretty engaging as it discusses themes of ” bullying, racism, corporate power, and factory farming,” and what teenager wouldn’t be interested in the latter two issues?
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
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
