Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
I have a soft spot for ballplayers who remain on one team for their entire career. Especially in the post reserve clause era, when athletes often look for the biggest paycheck, if not the best fit. Loyalty is a hard thing to come by these days. How many Cardinals fans expected Albert Pujols would re-sign […]
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Several new titles arrived over the past week including: Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs’ Glory Years, 1870-1945, by Randy Roberts and Carson Cunningham A People’s History of Baseball, by Mitchell Nathanson Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, by Paul Dickson (Of The Dickson Baseball Dictionary fame) The Big Show: Charles M. Conlon’s Golden Age Baseball […]
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James Bailey posted this review of Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, & Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan on the Baseball America website. Upshot: “This is a well-researched, fascinatingly told tale of two super powers whose shared passion for baseball wasn’t enough to maintain the peace, though it did help to restore it in […]
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New York Times columnist Dan Barry, author of Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game, posted this essay about rooting for the Yankees during their dog days of the late 1960s in the paper a couple of weeks ago. That’s kind of the way Mets fans felt post-1973 and again today. Which […]
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Congrats to Zachary James of Searsboro, Iowa, winner of the RKBB Facebook fan drawing, Curt Smith’s new book is A Talk in the Park: Nine Decades of Baseball Tales from the Broadcast Booth. (Yeah, I know it’s “like,” but that just sounds stupid in context, so I’m gonna keep on going with “fan.”) The next […]
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Many networks pull ratings stunts by pairing two of their popular shows together (NBC’s Law and Order with Homicide: Life on the Streets, for example). So I feel it’s kosher to offer this piece by author Allan Barra on The Atlantic‘s website on why Wilt the Stilt was the Big Bambino of his sport. It […]
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Chris Jaffe at The Hardball Times commemorates the occasion. I remember the first time I saw the book, sitting on a table at a Barnes and Noble on East 86th Street near Third Avenue. It was like at first sight. I must admit, it was one of those books that I didn’t read read. Must […]
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As a public service reminder, remember to set your clocks ahead one hour before turning in to night. The Mets, and to a lesser extent the Astros, will be falling back as they celebrate their 50th anniversary. David Brooks, the social commentator, published this piece in yesterday’s New York Times on the seemingly impossible tasks […]
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Actually, apologies to the office manager, who had to schlep these books to my desk. Four titles from the University of Nebraska Press arrived today (full disclosure: UNP will be publishing my 501 book next year). In order of interest to me (with all due respect to the authors and which probably means the order […]
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ForeWord Reviews carries a review of Robert Fitts’ latest book, Banzai Babe Ruth, in its current issue. Looking forward to reading this one on the near future.
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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
Spring cleaning, er, reading
March 7, 2012 · 2 comments
When my wife gave me a kindle for the Hanukka, it was with the understanding that I would bring fewer books into the house. Yeah, that’s not working out too well right about now, as new baseball titles just keep coming. I have been asking for them in Kindle format whenever possible, but it’s not […]
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