Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
On this date in 2012, Bryce Harper made his debut for the Washington Nationals. Phenom: The Making of Bryce Harper The Last Natural: Bryce Harper’s Big Gamble in Sin City and the Greatest Amateur Season Ever Beltway Boys: Stephen Strasburg, Bryce Harper, and the Rise of the Nationals So let’s see that’s three books in […]
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Over the past several days I’ve posted twice about Lou Gehrig, including his role inn the B-western film Rawhide. So what was in yesterday’s NY Times? When the Iron Horse (Almost) Played Tarzan
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Politics aside, I’ve often wondering why such smart people such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, Thomas Oliphant, and George Will (among others), have such an affinity for baseball. here, Will — author of A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred — tries to explain why the game is such a […]
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On this date in 1981: Seattle Mariners manager Maury Wills is suspended for two games as punishment for ordering the grounds crew to enlarge the batter’s boxes at the Kingdome. Wills decided to tamper with the chalk lines after the Oakland Athletics complained that Seattle’s Tom Paciorek repeatedly stepped out of the batter’s box while hitting. […]
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There are a few really good books that track the history of baseball in a day-by-day format. Obviously, some are better than others. My go-to is The Baseball Timeline: The Day-By-Day History of Baseball, from Valley Forge to the Present Day by Burt Solomon, originally published as a paperback by Avon in 1997. It was […]
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First of all, congratulations to John M. of Hillsborough, NJ, winner of last week’s book, Down to the Last Pitch: How the 1991 Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves Gave Us the Best World Series of All Time, by Tim Wendel. Thank you all for your comments. This week’s offering is the brand-spankin’ new copy of […]
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A Celebration of Baseball’s Greats In Stories and Images, The Complete Roster of Inductees, by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Little, Brown and Company, 648 pages. $35. In a sense, it’s not fair to judge a book like this. After all, who has more resources about the history of the game and […]
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In advance of my Bookshelf Conversation with Jonathan Eig which I will post tomorrow, here’s a blast from the past. Climax! was one of those live-performance anthology television series in the 1950s sponsored by a major corporation, in this case Chrysler. This 1956 episode, The Lou Gehrig Story, starred Wendell Corey as Gehrig, character actor […]
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The Passover holidays have played havoc with my schedule, so there’s a lot to catch up on. First off, can you remember those Bicentennial Minutes that CBS used to broadcast in the months leading up to the big celebration? Well, Dan Epstein, author of the new Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial […]
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The top-ten baseball books as per Amazon.com. Caveat 1: Print editions only (at least for now); I’m old fashioned that way. Caveat 2: Since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read it. But it’ll be close enough for government work. Caveat 3: […]
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The top-ten baseball books as per Amazon.com. Caveat 1: Print editions only (at least for now); I’m old fashioned that way. Caveat 2: Since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read it. But it’ll be close enough for government work. Caveat 3: […]
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First of all, congratulations to Bob W. of Chantilly, VA, winner of last week’s book, Long Shot, by Mike Piazza and Lonnie Wheeler. Thank you all for your comments. This week’s offering is the brand-spankin’ new Stars and Strikes: Baseball and American in the Bicentennial Summer of ’76 by Dan Epstein. A reminder about the […]
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Once again, Tom Hoffarth, media columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News, is doing his 30 baseball books in 30 days feature. First up: Mover and Shaker: Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers, and Baseball’s Westward Expansion by my old SABR pal, Andy McCue.
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Yesterday, I posted a question to the Baseball Books group on Facebook. If you could have dinner with any four authors who have written about baseball — not strictly baseball authors — at the same table, who would they be? My choices: Roger Angell, David Halberstam, Lawrence Ritter, and Bernard Malamud. Of course, four is […]
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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 Bookshelf Conversation: Jonathan Eig
April 21, 2014
Lou Gehrig. Jackie Robinson. Two of the game’s most iconic players, celebrated for their courage under extreme conditions. Both the subjects of outstanding biographies by Jonathan Eig, and both of which appear in 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die Eig has worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Chicago magazine, […]
Tagged as: ALS, Jackie Robinson, Jonathan Eig, Lou Gehrig
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