Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Where were lectures like this when I was in college? Prof. Timothy B. Shutt from Kenyon College offers this eight-plus-hour rendering of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game: The History of Baseball in America.” Here’s the Course Overview from rbflim.com: “Baseball has been celebrated as “America’s National Pastime” for more than one hundred and […]
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Cubs’ skipper Lou Pienlla and Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon were named managers of the year for 2008. Pinella published Sweet Lou, written with Maury Allen in 1986. He’s got a new one coming out next year from St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne. So can it be long before Maddon has one, too? Managers whose teams […]
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This one by Mark Cressnan in The A to Z History of Baseball. At the risk of being totally unfair, I wonder about such books, self-published and without much pomp and circumstance. For the brief press release to state “Cressman, who possesses a Master’s Degree in Sport Administration, is an authority on the subject matter […]
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There are several well-done books chronicling the contributions made by athletes to the military service of their country that I wanted to mention on this special day: Spartan Seasons: How Baseball Survived the Second World War, by Richard Goldstein (who writes such eloquent obituaries for The New York Times), (McMillan, 1980) They Also Served: Baseball […]
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Rapid Robert turned 90 on Nov. 3. Feller was one of those players from “the greatest generation” — including Ted Williams, Warren Spahn, Bob Buhl, Hank Greenberg, Joe DiMaggio and many others — who lost precious years to the service of their country. Yes, some, like Feller and Williams, were on the front lines while […]
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The eulogies keep pouring in about this marvelous writer and raconteur. This one, from Maggie Hendricks of NBC Chicago, specifically speaks to Terkel as a baseball fan. This one from NPR.org isn’t baseball-centric, but he deserves the recognition.
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A lot of fans proably forget that the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is also a library. I spent a great week up there several years ago, doing research for a book about baseball during the Korean War years. the staff couldn’t have been nicer, and the access of walking around like I belonged was […]
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Recently, I was working on an article about Dave Kaplan, director of the Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls, NJ. Kaplan and Berra have collaborated on four books, so I headlined the story “Berra’s Boswell.” Thought that was pretty clever, comparing Kaplan (no relation) to the biographer of Samuel Johnson. Then my copy-editor asked about […]
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Fans have been talking incessantly about the Cubs’ failure to win a World Championship in the last 100 years. What often goes overlooked is how they got to that one. If it weren’t for the infamous baserunning blunder by a New York Giants rookie (actually playing in his second season), the Cubs’ futility record would […]
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The Capital region writer for the Albany Times-Union weighs in on the meaning of the national pastime.
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From the Sports Locker blog.
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A lot has been written over the last couple of days (in the New York area at least) about the firing of Mets manager Willie Randolph. It’s not so much that he was fired as much as how the deed was done. How terrible, the sports pundits cried, to do it in the middle of […]
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From AskMen.com, five obscure facts (well, perhaps for those who visit such Web sites, rather than read about the game): Early MLB teams were not distinguished by their jerseys Jackie Robinson was not the MLB’s first black player The MLB has a long tradition of cheating The MLB’s rules used to allow one side of […]
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Andrea Weaver hosts a tribute site for David Strathairn, the actor who portrayed the knuckle-balling White Sox pitcher in Eight Men Out. She devotes an entire page to his accomplishments as an actor and surprisingly convincing athlete. Factoid: Strathairn’s sone, Tery, played the role of Bucky, one of the little kids who idolized the Sox […]
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The School Library Journal Web site reports: Just in time for baseball season, the Library of Congress (LOC) has assembled a Web clearinghouse devoted to America’s pastime. The simply named “Historic Baseball Resources” features multimedia offerings from the library’s vast trove, including rare images of early games and the original sheet music to “Take Me […]
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Time to play catch-up: From a rival site about baseball book reviews, this piece on Hammerin’ Hank, George Almighty and The Say Hey Kid (another of those books that uses words like “greatest” and “forever” in its title). An oldie, but good: this review of The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, by Douglass Wallop, […]
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in 1923, Babe Ruth hits the first home run at Yankee Stadium’s opening in front of over 72,000 fans. The two-run shot off Red Sox hurler Howard Ehmke helps beat Boston, 4-1. The ballpark cost $2.5 million, the price of a lousy utility player these days. With the closing of the ballpark after this season, […]
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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 blog 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
* Crossing the line
November 14, 2008
I love it when baseball slides into areas with which its not normally associated. George Will writing two books on the game, for example, of W. P. Kinsella’s Fantastic Baseball collection of science fiction stories. Here’s another one: Nate SIlver, who is not only one of the producers of Baseball Prospectus but also created fivethirtyeight.com […]
Tagged as: baseball and politics, Baseball Prospectus, Nate Silver
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