Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
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 […]
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The Negro League umpire turned author celebrates the big 9-1 today.
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This it the time of year when the baseball media offer their considered opinions on their favorite prospects. Sometimes they’re spot on, other times, not so much. So I thought, why not apply this to the upcoming “rookie crop” of baseball books? That is, titles that are making their debuts in 2014 — no reprints/reissues […]
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One of my favorite features in the old Street & Smith annuals was the list of statistical targets (The Sporting News now has that burden/honor). The contemporary players were listed along with the all-timers for major categories such as home runs, RBI, wins, strikeouts, etc. But many of those milestones don’t seem like that much […]
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Yes, another book about Pete Rose. This one is by Kostya Kennedy, author of 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports, so I expect good things. One line that particularly caught my eye in the piece: “Kennedy told me his publicists don’t want him to talk about the book before its release […]
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According to the old expression, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything. But if that were the case, you pretty much don’t have the Internet. You certainly don’t have critics. But having acquired C.Y. Ruth’s Mets: The Complete History of the New York Mets, I feel I have to warn the […]
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Posted on Facebook by John Rosengren, author of Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes: Babe Ruth’s birthday today. Born 1895. Hank Greenberg thought Babe was the greatest ballplayer ever. In early 1947 he visited Ruth at his Riverside apartment while the Babe was recovering from throat cancer surgery and on a doctor-prescribed beer diet to […]
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by Brook Zelcer and Jelena Aleksich. Self-published, $17. (thelittlebookofyankeesevil.com) A little book gets a little review. Zelcer, a New Jersey school teacher, compiles a list of almost 50 crimes and misdemeanors perpetrated by the hated (by some) franchise, either as an organization (when it “steals the design for the famous interlocking NY logo from a […]
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(A Baseball Bookshelf encore with revisions.) Small wonder in that they had a lot to do with Jackie Robinson. Robinson’s teammate, Don Newcombe, recalled a meeting between the two iconic figures for a piece in Time Magazine in 2007: Do you know what Jackie’s impact was? Well, let Martin Luther King tell you. In 1968, […]
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Hey, if A-Rod can do it, why not Bud? Commissioner Selig has said he wants to write a book when he retires. For you Yankee and home run fans, this looks interesting: New York Yankees Home Runs: A Comprehensive Factbook, 1903-2012, by Mitchell S. Soivenski. It should not be surprising that this is a McFarland […]
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According to the Orlando Sentinel, “Mark Gilbert, a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser from Boca Raton, may be on his way to New Zealand and Samoa” as U.S. ambassador. If Gilbert’s name seems at all familiar, you’re an older baseball uber-fan: Gilbert appeared in seven games for the Chicago White Sox in 1985, batting .273 in […]
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Congratulations to Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas, who were announced today as the newest inductees to the Baseball Hall of Fame. According to the organization’s press release, this marks just the second time that three players were elected in their first year of eligibility. From a fan’s point of view, I think it’s […]
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Kind sounds like the title for a country-western song, don’t it? Anyway, Rob Neyer as Baseball Nation posted this piece about how prescient Bill James was in an essay in the 2001 edition of The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. BN’s Scott Lindholm had published this one a few days earlier.
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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 […]
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A collection of items about Ben Bradlee Jr.’s new bio of Ted Williams. With all due modesty, kicking this off with my own review of the book, which appears on Bookreporter.com. Here’s another one from USA Today. Slate’s review, by David Bry And while I’m at it, no harm in reposting the two NY Times […]
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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
What if…
January 17, 2014
Saw this on Marty Appel‘s Facebook page: Ok, so I thought of this last night. It’s September 29, 2014. Yankees and Red Sox have tied for first in AL East and need to have a one-game playoff to see who wins the division. But wait, it is game #163…..A-Rod has served his 162 game suspension, […]
Tagged as: Alex Rodriguez, Marty Appel
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