Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
by Peter Golenbock. The Lyons Press, 2007. When 7 came out a few years ago, many sportswriters — especially in the New York area — considered it a shande (shame). How could Golenbock — who had heretofore published only non-fiction — have besmirched the character of the late lamented Mickey Mantle with this trashy, borderline […]
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Haven’t read this one, so not endorsing and not not endorsing, but seems like this could make for appropriate beach reading. Parenthetically, I wonder what the thought process was for the book art. At the risk of appearing risque, the cover makes me think of one of those apocryphal announcer miscues about a young couple […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, July 2. Title Rank General Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 1 Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball, by Bill Madden 2 The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by Scott Turbow […]
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So my softball team participated in a playoff game last night. We lost a heart-breaker, up by three runs going into the bottom of the final frame to the team that finished in first place. Don’t get me started. Anyway, I bring this up in conjunction with Stephen King’s baseball novella. A passage from this […]
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* The Book Corner posted this review of Stephen King’s Blockade Billy. Upshot: The book “will definitely satisfy Stephen King readers as well as those who don’t normally go for the sort of stories on which he made his reputation. And it’s closer to those kinds of stories than the story that fills out the […]
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My review of the new Stephen King novella (plus an additional story) is up on Bookreporter.com. For your convenience, I’ve reprinted it below: There was plenty of buzz in the mystery/thriller/horror and baseball fiction communities when it was announced that Stephen King would release a novella titled BLOCKADE BILLY. Online book merchants quickly took pre-orders […]
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The New York Times‘ sports media guy, Richard Sandomir, published this piece on Stephen King’s newest. Read the novella last week, and, frankly, I wonder if it would have received all this attention had it been written by a different (read: not as famous) author. While it’s a sufficient story, we keep waiting — knowing […]
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by Billy Lombardo (Overlook, 2010) The last couple of titles I’ve blogged about have father and son issues (Steinbrenner and Home, Away). So, with Father’s Day coming up, I figured I complete the trifecta. The great love of Henry Granville’s life is baseball. It is a time-honored tradition he knows he will pass on to […]
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by Jeff Gillenkirk. Chin Music Press, 2010 Just in time for Father’s Day, Home, Away is the tale of the sacrifices we make for our children. In the case, it’s a multi-million dollar contract that pitcher Jason Thibodeuax is giving up to raise his wayward son, Rafe, the product of the first romantic encounter the […]
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Readers of the Bookshelf know I don’t usually post news about books for younger readers, but I’ll make an exception for ex-ballplayers who author said books. In this case, it’s former Cardinals outfielder Brian Jordan who recently published his second children’s book, I Told You I Can Play. Proceeds from the sales of the book […]
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Got a few extra mil you’re not doing anything with? Why not buy the Field of Dreams? Cheap at twice the price. Here’s another spin on the situation from Sportressofblogitude.
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There’s something supernatural about a review of a book that hasn’t been published yet, but it doesn’t seem to be stopping anyone from opining on Stephen King’s upcoming baseball novella, Blockade Billy. From Publishers Weekly: A quirky baseball player with a past shrouded in secrecy is the tragic hero of this macabre tale from the […]
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by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (2003; Picador Translation 2009) I can’t even remember where I heard of this title but I’m glad I did. Ogawa tells a touching story about a Japanese housekeeper, her 10-year-old son, and her professional charge, a former mathematics professor with an unusual disability, which was the result of […]
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From Publishers Weekly and going with the premise that any mention of baseball qualifies: We Are Never as Beautiful as We Are Now: Stories Adam Gallari. Ampersand (SPD, dist.), $15.95 paper (150p) ISBN 978-0-9841025-3-2 Focusing on baseball fields and bars from New York to Los Angeles, promising newcomer Gallari presents nine fleeting tales of desultory […]
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From Openpage, “the blog of the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College”: King’s announcement arrives –not so coincidentally — just in time for Opening Day. King, a lifelong citizen of Red Sox Nation (he lives part-time on Florida’s west coast so he can catch spring training games), is one of America’s […]
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By Bob Mitchell. Kensington, 2008. As a lover of the TV show Lost and sci-fi in general, I always welcome the chance to mix the genre with baseball (see, Baseball Fantastic, edited by W.P. Kinsella). So it was with a sense of joy when Bob Mitchell’s Once Upon a Fastball swerved from a regular work […]
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By Bob Mitchell. Kensington, 2008. As a lover of the TV show Lost and sci-fi in general, I always welcome the chance to mix the genre with baseball (see, Baseball Fantastic, edited by W.P. Kinsella). So it was with a sense of joy when Bob Mitchell’s Once Upon a Fastball swerved from a regular work […]
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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
