Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
He becomes the 24th pitcher, and sixth left-hander, to notch 300 wins.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The Sunday papers are great for filling space with features that don’t get dap during the week. For example, the Arizona Republic published this interesting piece on the dearth of real superstars these days, while the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran this reminisence on Harvey Haddix’s near-perfect game.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The main baseball article is John Heyman’s look at the recent late-inning heroics by the Yankees. Other items include a sidebar on the Tigers’ resurgence and Albert Chen’s recounting of Harvey Haddix’s non-perfect game just 50 years ago.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
From the SABR List-serve: Marc Okkonen’s terrific pictorial book, 2000 Cups of Coffee, is now available for download on the members-only portion of the SABR website. You can find a link to it as soon as you log onto the members’ page. This book contains images of approximately 2,000 major leaguers of the 1900-1949 era. […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The May/June issue of ForeWord Magazine, a publication that specializes in small and university presses, carries my feature on nine 2009 baseball titles, including: Under the March Sun: The Story of Spring Training High-Flying Birds: The 1942 St. Louis Cardinal Babe Ruth: Remembering the Bambino in Stories, Photos & Memorabilia Yankee Colors: The Glory Years […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
From TheHardBallTimes, this review of Bill Reynolds’’78: The Boston Red Sox, a Historic Game, and a Divided City. Upshot: Despite many faults, HBT reviewer Chris Jaffe concludes, “I enjoyed this book far more than I expected to because of its considerable strengths. Though it couldn’t quite fuse its elements, Reynolds didn’t try to force fusion […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Would it seem silly to you to devote an entire book that showed a particular baseball was not the one hit by Bobby Thomson in the 1951 playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. That how I felt when I read this piece in The New Daily News on Miracle Ball: My Search for the Shot […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Every issue of the classic publication is available through Google books. The first issue: July 1945. Cover price: 15 cents. Tag line: “64 Pages — and Every Word Baseball!” Thanks to John Zajc and Rob Neyer for the item.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
This piece on MyCentralJourney.com features an exhibit on baseball in the Garden State running through June 27. The Revival of Professional Baseball in New Jersey, an exhibit in the second-floor gallery of the Main Library, 5 Washington Street, Newark, highlights the return of baseball as a community activity in New Jersey, and encompasses every one […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Allan Barra, author of the new bio on Yogi berra, wrote this piece for The Wall Street Journal on how the game has changed over the last half-century.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
From David Vincent: Bill Nowlin and David Vincent announce the publication of their new book titled “The Ultimate Red Sox Home Run Guide.” The volume is published by Rounder Books and is available through many fine retailers. The guide takes a look at Red Sox homers from the regular season to the postseason, with nearly […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The Story of the Sensational Baseball Song, by Amy Whorf McGuiggan. University of Nebraska Press, 2009. This slim volume would seem to be the companion for last year’s Baseball Greatest Hit. While the latter was almost a who’s who, what;’s what and where’s where of the game’s unofficial anthem, McGuiggan’s slim volume concentrates more on […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
SABR’s Deadball Era Committee gives the Larry Ritter Award to the best new book related to the Deadball Era. Ritter was the author/editor of The Glory of Their Times, a seminal book of baseball oral history. The 2009 winner is Ron Selter for Ballparks of the Deadball Era (McFarland). The three other Finalists for the […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Hall of Fame, American Library Association Partner To Tell Story of Pride and Passion Traveling Exhibit Dedicated To African-American Baseball Experience Making Its Way To 50 Libraries Around America (COOPERSTOWN, NY) – The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the American Library Association have teamed up to help tell the story of the […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
No, it’s not a history of the Irish and the national pastime (although we are getting close to St. Patrick’s Day…) One of the benefits of being a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) are the wonderful publications that arrive in the mail each year. Scholars, historians, math professors, and just plain […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Dermont McEvoy of Publishers Weekly published the magazine’s annual baseball roundup. No surprise, but this year’s selections are heavy on the “bad boy” books, including Selena Robert’s A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez (April, Harper Collins). PW contacted Roberts’s editor at HarperCollins, senior v-p/ executive editor David Hirshey. Hirshey, who in the past has […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the New York Mets’ first World Championship and since everyone loves a celebration, there are several new books marking that occasion in particular and the team in general, including: Shea Good Bye: The Untold Inside Story of the Historic 2008 Season, by Keith Hernandez and Matthew Silverman A […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
From the Bleeding Cubbie Blue blog (say that three times fast). Upshot: One of the best things about this book is the large number of photos and drawings showing knuckleball grips — you’ll be surprised at how many different ones there are, and most of them don’t use knuckles at all, but grips with fingernails. […]
{ 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
* Speaking of heroes…
May 31, 2009
Owen Canfield, a former full-time columnist and sports editor of The Hartford Courant, focuses his now-monthly columnon books about ballplayers whose accomplishments go beyond the ball park. The first is Ira Berkow’s The Corporal Was a Pitcher, the Courage of Lou Brissie. The second is a book on five CDs, Clemente, the Passion and Grace […]
Tagged as: Lou Brissie, Roberto Clemente
{ Comments on this entry are closed }