Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
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 […]
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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.
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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PBS recently announced that it will air The Tenth Inning, the new Ken Burns documentary on baseball, in the spring of 2010. The special will coincide with a re-broadcast of the original nine-part documentary, which debuted in 1994 and was seen by more than 48 million viewers. The Tenth Inning follows baseball’s trajectory from 1993 […]
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From our friend Greg Spira comes this link to LibraryJournal.com’s annual baseball feature. Among the usual share of biographies and memoirs, histories, and social commentaries are such themes as: Yet another biography about Yogi Berra, this one by homonymic author Allen Barra, and one on Walter O’Malley by Michael D’Antonio Ira Berkow’s bio of Lou […]
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Judging by the email I’ve received about The Bookshelf, I would guess that many of you are of an age before the Internet made instant gratification an inalienable right. If you wanted “the latest” information on the upcoming baseball season, you got it from from the annual magazines that came out in the early spring, […]
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This is the time of year when home gardeners (of which I am one) look forward to receiving their seed catalogs. I also enjoy getting the latest from the publishing world. Today I received the Ivan R. Dee catalog, which includes the following baseball titles: Catcher, by Peter Morris — The author of such neo-classics […]
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This piece by Bryan Curtis, a senior editor at The Daily Beast, tries to break down which pro sport really deserves to be known as “the” national pastime. The NFL is really making a push for that designation. “It recently sent out a 29-page white paper [clickable via the NY Times article] that professional football […]
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From Beyond the Box Score, this review of Brad Snyder’s book of the baseball rebel.
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Seeking to make the most from the opportunity, Columbia University Press posted this little update after Charles A. Alexander, author of Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era (published by CUP in 2002), was interviewed the other day in The New York Times. I inadvertently omitted his book from a brief listing of others […]
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If the Yankees spend $180 million on a player but no one comes to the stadium to watch him — if people can’t afford the price of admission — does his play count? This piece in today’s New York Times takes a look back at what it was like for the national pastime during the […]
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In keeping with the policy NPR seems to have about replaying its best bits during the week between Christmas and New Years, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, hosted by Peter Sagal, featured a few prominent guests from the “Not My Job” segment, including Sen. George McGovern, Leonard Nimoy, Garrison Keillor, Jimmy Carter of the singing […]
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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
