Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
From Perth to Sacramento, by Nicholas R.W. Henning (Booksurge.com, 2009) Regular readers of the Bookshelf know I rarely offer my own reviews of baseball fiction. I find it too subjective and my education and skills in critiquing the genre too inferior. But once in awhile a book will find its way here that bears some […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Tis the season. As the summer game segues into fall’s finales, no less than five titles deal with the World Series, including two about the 1975 games between the Red Sox and Reds, one about Don Larsen’s 1956 perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers, and But the one that goes back the furthest is The […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I think a fantasy for every collector is to come across a rare item totally by accident: a garage sale in which the seller wants to get rid of some bit of memorabilia that used to belong to a dead uncle. A book long-forgotten in an attic corner. Or a cannister of grainy black-and-white film […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
by Brian Biegel. Crown, 2009. Miracle Ball is at once a sweet and haunting book. The premise has the author, whose day job is that of an independent filmmaker, on an obsessive quest to find the whereabouts of an/or ownership of the ball hit by Bobby Thomson in the 1951 playoff game against the Brooklyn […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Memories & Memorabilia from the House that Ruth Built, by T.S. O’Connell (Krause Publications) Leave it to other books to dwell on records and anecdotes, Legendary Yankee Stadium is, in fact, a collectors, dream, assembling scores of collectibles depicting some of the most beloved players in the long, storied history of the franchise. O’Connell, 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 }
by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci Doubleday The former manager of the New York Yankees — and one of its most successful — teams up with Sports Illustrated’s senior baseball writer for this unique and somewhat baffling presentation. Although Joe Torre gets top billing as the nominative author, the reader will get the impression that […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
An Unofficial Journal of Baseball’s Best Fans, Volume #1 By Will Byington It takes a special person to be a Cubs fan. With such a rich history of failure and disappointment, some would call them masochists, but looking at the photos and reading the stories in Byington’s new book, they seem happy enough. (Of course, […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Herewith a new “feature”: books that I’ve recently finished, but haven’t gotten around to reviewing, along with a mini-mini-critique. The Brooklyn Nine Yankees World Series Memories
{ 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
