Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
From the NovelJourney blog, this Q&A with the author of Safe at Home, a story about “a sportswriter, a black baseball player, and the cast of characters that surrounds them when the minor league color line is broken in a small Southern town.” You can learn more about the book from the author’s Web site.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Another oldie but goodie, this one from Play by the Book, a blog of books and baseball.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
A selection of four kids’ books, including: Smithsonian Baseball Treasures, by Stephen Wong Swinging for the Fences: Hank Aaron and Me, by Mike Leonetti Six Innings, by James Preller Barnstormers, Game 3, by Phil Bildner
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
“Baseball books for a snowy day” include: Last Days of Summer, by Steve Kluger (a novel) Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella (the basis for Field of Dreams) Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig,” a biography by Jonathan Eig Waiting for Teddy Williams, by Howard Frank Mosher (novel) Eight Men Out, by Eliot […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
From Rich Karlgaard’s “Digital Rules” column on Forbes.com, this brief recommendation for Frank Deford’s latest: You’re Entitled early each spring to read at least one good baseball book. Slide into Frank Deford’s novel, The Entitled, now out in paperback (Sourcebooks). This fine work ranks with Field of Dreams and The Natural. His praise, indeed, but […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The muse behind Eliot Asinof’s novel, Man on Spikes, would have been 88 this year. Rutner, who had the distinction of being the oldest Jewish ex-major leaguer, enjoyed the proverbial “cup of coffee” with the Philadelphia As in 1927. He passed away last October.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Based on Bill Veeck’s quashed attempt to buy the Philadelphia A’s and stock it with players from the Negro Leagues, The End of Baseball features a number of real-life characters, including Veeck, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (who sought to keep the game lily-white); columnist Walter Winchell (the Matt Drudge of his day?); and J. Edgar […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Jane Austen and baseball? Who knew? Thanks to Jim Charlton, publications director of the Society for American Baseball Research for the lead. According to the OED, the earliest reference to baseball is the Jane Austin novel, which was published in 1815, not 1818 says the OED. I talked to an OED editor a couple of […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Don’t you just love the Internet? It’s filled with all sorts of treasure. The latest nugget I’ve found is from Manybooks.net, a site for free e-books, available via download for several platforms, which include some rare baseball titles: The High School Pitcher, by H. Irving Hancock The Red Headed Outfield and Other Stories (1920) and […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Mickey Rutner, the oldest Jewish ex-major leaguer, passed away Oct. 17. Rutner, 87, was the real-life inspiration for Elliot Asinof’s baseball novel, Man On Spikes. During the past season, Rutner was still working part-time for the Red Rock Express. His job, he said in n interview conducted less than a month before he died, was […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The second production of short baseball fiction from Symphony Space, which originally aired Oct. 12, 2007 by Public Radio International, featured: Various authors, Baseball Haiku, read by Alec Baldwin and Isaiah Sheffer (from Baseball Haiku: The Best Haiku Ever Written About the Game, W.W. Norton). Frankly, I couldn’t always catch the 17 syllables that make […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Thanks to the powers that be for producing two sessions of top notch baseball stories read at Manhattan’s Symphony Space. The stories in this section, which aired on Sept. 28, 2007 by Public Radio International, include: James T. Farrell, “My Grandmother Goes to Comiskey Park,” read by John Shea (from My Baseball Diary, Southern Illinois […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
World’s oldest Jewish ex-major leaguer tells all Just over 60 years ago — Sept. 13, 1947 — Mickey Rutner hit his only major league home run. He did it as a member of the Philadelphia Athletics in an 8-2 win over the Chicago White Sox. Rutner, who has made his retirement home in Georgetown, Tex., […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
By Thomas K. Perry Pocal Press, 2007. From his humble Southern roots up to and including his banishment from organized baseball, Joseph Jefferson Jackson was considered one of the brightest stars in the sports firmament. Even the mighty Babe Ruth claimed to have modeled his style after the lithe lefty. The story of Shoeless Joe […]
{ 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
