Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Patrick Saunders of DenverPost.com also recommends this excellent book by the late David Halberstam.
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I never had a brother, so I don’t know what it’s like to be in someone’s shadow. Imagine Dom DiMaggio. He had a wonderful 11-year career with the Boston Red Sox, finishing with a .298 career batting average and a seven-time all-star. But there was Joe, always in the spotlight. Dom passed away yesterday at […]
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What a shocker to learn The Bird had passed away so suddenly. I remember seeing Fidrych beat the Yankees on an ABC Monday Night Baseball telecast in 1976 during a day off from the summer camp where I coached the softball team. His antics drew rave reviews from the announcers and appreciation from the fans. […]
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The long-time baseball writer and executive died today at the age of 83. After spending 25 years with the Mets as promotions director, traveling secretary, public relations director, and special assistant to the general manager, Richman joined the Yankees in May, 1989 as senior VP. He had a hand in the hiring of Joe Torre […]
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The oldest ex-major leaguer passed away yeasterday at the age of 100. Here’s the AP obituary, but I expect Richard Goldstein of The New York Times to come up with something soon. Veteran writer Ray Robinson wrote this tribute when Werber ht the century mark last June 20. And read this appreciation from Steve Politi […]
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The last timne I went on vacation, I returned to the news that Bobby Murcer had died. This time, it’s Dock Ellis. (Just goes to show that I can’t go away for a minute.) The former Pittsburgh Pirate, who admitted to tossing his 1970 no-hitter against the San Diego Padres under the influence of LSD, […]
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Stevens was not a baseball player, manager, coach, front office exec, peanut vendor, or team mascot. Rather, Stevens, who passed away on Dec. 8 at the age of 60, was lawyer. His claim to fame? According to his obituary in The New York Times, his slyly humorous law-review note on the relationship between baseball’s infield […]
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Sal Yvars, the catcher for the New York Giants who spilled the beans about sign stealing during the famous playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951, died Dec. 10 at the age of 84. Richard Goldstein does his usual excellent job in the NY Times‘ obituary. Yvars, the Giants’ back-up receiver from 1957-53 (with […]
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Score, who died Nov. 11 at the age of 75, was the poster boy for “what could have been.” A fireballing left-hander for the Cleveland Indians in the early 1950s, Score endured every pitcher’s nightmare: a head-high line drive back to the box. In this case, the shot came off the bat of the Yankees’ […]
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Former Commissioner Fay Vincent, author of two books of oral baseball history (most recently, We Would Have Played the Game for Nothing), wrote this tribute to fellow oral historian Studs Terkel for the Florida-based TCPalm.com site.
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I was surprised to see this notice in the Publishers Weekly e-mail, until I saw the context: There probably has never been a better baseball book than Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer, which was a paean to the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. With Roe’s death there are only a few left, Carl Erskine, […]
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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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Studs Terkel died yesterday at the age of 96. He never wrote a baseball book (as far as I’m aware), but Stud Terkel was always a favorite of mine, long before he appeared as sportswriter Huey Fullerton in John Sayle’s Eight Men Out. His acting style might not have been Oscar material, but he contributed […]
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Tresh was one of the last players to bridge the good Yankees to the bad Yankees in the 1960s.
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The inspiration for Bernard Malamud’s epic baseball novel, The Natural, died this date in 1972. His name kept popping up whenever a star-struck fan stalked a celebrity, becoming part of pop culture, surfacing in some very strange places. Like on the TV series Beverly Hills, 90210, according to this episode synopsis from season 10: During […]
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My 40-Year Journey in Pinstripes, by Bobby Murcer with Glen Waggoner (Harper, 2008) Sept. 8 marked Bobby Murcer’s big league debut. That, coupled with his recent passing, makes this an appropriate time to discuss his autobiography. Yankee For Life was a tough one to get through. Not because it was badly written — not at […]
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You can read the entire issue dealing with 9/11 from the SI Vault here.
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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
