Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
There’s always a major thing going on while I’m on vacation that I don’t hear about until I get back. In this case it was the “announcement” that Derek Jeter might enter the publishing world when he retires from his playing career. According to a piece in the Nov. 14 NY Times, “Jeter, the Yankees’ […]
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This piece by Rob Neyer on Baseball Nation relates to two recent entries on the Bookshelf, one about Tim McCarver calling it a broadcast career, the other about the poor job FOX does producing the World Series. Among my favorite passages from Neyer: About Tim McCarver’s Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans: “There are […]
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Regardless of your opinion of Tim McCarver, endings are almost always sad. Last night’s World Series finale was the swan song of his broadcasting career. I especially appreciate McCarver’s comment that his goals as a broadcaster included “teaching you something you may not have known about this great game.” He’s done that on the air […]
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From Publisher’s Weekly: Jewish children’s publisher Kar-Ben has pulled Ryan Braun—known as the Hebrew Hammer—from the cover of Jewish Sports Stars: Athletic Heroes Past and Present by David J. Goldman, which releases next month in its second edition (the original was published in 2006). Joni Sussman, publisher for Kar-Ben (which is owned by Lerner) told […]
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♦ The Knoxville News published this review of native son R.A. Dickley’s Wherever I Wind Up. Upshot: “t is rare to find a baseball book by an insider that dishes no dirt. It is even rarer to find a professional athlete willing to acknowledge his own mistakes. In “Wherever I Wind Up,” R.A. Dickey reveals […]
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My daughter attends NYU, which is where I eventually learned of this course taught by the school’s president, John Sexton, during a Parent’s Weekend last fall. “Baseball as a Road to God” is this subject of a front page story in today’s New York Times. Hoping to sit in on one of the sessions, I […]
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When I was a kid, about 10 years old, I used to get a weekly allowance of 50 cents, which I normally would use to purchase a baseball magazine. One week, while running errands for my mother, I took the audacious step of using some of the change to supplement my stipend to buy both […]
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Before he began working with an actual publisher, James used to type out The Baseball Analyst on a bi-monthly basis and make copies as needed for distribution. How times have changed. Like SABR’s annual publications, The National Pastime and Baseball Research Journal, the Analysts were contributor-driven. The first issue contains articles such as “Ballpark Effects […]
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To me, at least. Amazon.com has selected Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding as Best Book of the Year. Seriously? I haven’t read any of the other top nine books, but I’m sorry — and with all dues respect — I can’t believe that TAOF is the best title, out of the hundreds that have […]
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Not by me (at least not yet), but via a “book club” effort by the always thoughtful Pitchers and Poets blog. They started this “event” Sept. 21 (shows how long I’ve been out of circulation), so if you start from the beginning you’ll be working a bit awkwardly out of sequence, but it’s worth it. […]
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A Critical Study, by Kathleen Sullivan. McFarland, 2005. Novels and feature films tend to find comfort in stock characters. Stories about celebrities in particular focus on two or three types of women. You have your temptress who, for various reasons, wants to keep the protagonist from succeeding at his mission. For baseball materials you have […]
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Now brought to you by … the breakfast cereal of AMC’s The Killing. Very cool. Anyway… * Ben Platt posted this review of Kostya Kennedy’s new biography of Joe DiMaggio on MLB.com. * The “Bats” baseball blog of The New York Times ran this profile of Steve Stone, author of the new book Said In […]
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Day 23: New York Mets: 50 Amazin’ Seasons — The Complete Illustrated History Day 24: The Runmakers: A New Way to Rate Baseball Players Day 25: Wizardry: Baseball’s All-Time Greatest Fielders Revealed Day 26: Pitchers of Beer: The Story of the Seattle Rainiers Day 27: Bullpen Diaries: Mariano Rivera, Bronx Dreams, Pinstripe Legends, and the […]
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Time once again for a major links dump to make up for bad behavior. Warning: some of these links go back to March. Just sayin’. * A member of Red Sox Nation pays tribute to a “mortal enemy” by giving the NY Times photo book on Derek Jeter the thumbs up. * The Wall Street […]
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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
For the love/ambivalence of the game
October 3, 2013
The New York Times published two pieces recently about baseball (outside the usual stuff) about aspects of love and ambivalence. The first, by Karen Crouse, considers the marriage between Oakland As rookie Nate Freiman and golfer Amanda Blumenherst and how their athletic careers were keeping them apart. So Blumenherst, has been playing her sport since […]
Tagged as: Amanda Blumenherst, Jonathan Mahler, Nate Freiman
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