Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Alex Belth, author of Stepping Up: The Story of All-Star Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Players’ Rights, posts a list of book suggestions on his Brxon Banter blog (say that fast 10 times). About half of them seem to be those titles commemorating Yankee Stadium.
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Five Decades of Stadium Memories (Triumph Books, 2008) Compared with some of the wonderful books that have been published about Yankee Stadium’s last season, this slim paperback comes across like a poor stepchild, an afterthought in the world of recorded memory. I know the Mets’ home since 1964 doesn’t have the same cachet of the […]
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The Oklahoman’s sports columnist Berry Tramel offers this list of five favorite baseball novels, which does not contain many of the “usual suspects.”
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This one of five top choices comes from The Washington Post Book Blog, Shortstacks.
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From the One Minute Book Reviews blog, this mini-rev of a cuh-lassic. Upshot: “…written for adults but likely also to appeal to many teenagers.”
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Posted the second list before the first, so here it is: Ball Four (Jim Bouton, 1970) | This book changed everything about how we cover and view sports and the people who play them. It also almost got me and my friend Prisby thrown out of sophomore English because we kept reading passages out loud […]
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MyrtleBeachOnline’s sports columnist Sean Horgan offered a list of 20 great sports books, including the following baseball titles, listed in his order: The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, (Bill James, 1986) This book changed the way many people looked at baseball, encompassing history, anecdotes and statistical analysis. The Great American Novel (Philip Roth, 1973) Roth […]
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From Hour.ca, a Canadian Website, these briefs on: Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Takes a Swing at Baseball Baseball’s Best 1,000: Rankings of the Skills, the Achievements and the Performance of the Greatest Players of All Time The Worst Call Ever! (not strictly a baseball book, but close enough for jazz) Smithsonian Baseball: Inside the World’s […]
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A set of mini-reviews, mostly of older titles, from the Desert Sun, including: Playing With The Enemy, A Baseball Prodigy, A World at War and a Field of Broken Dreams, by Gary Moore. Teammates, A Portrait of a Friendship, by David Halberstram. Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, by David Maraniss. The […]
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ReadingRockets.org, “a national multimedia project offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help,” offered these suggestions for kids.
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This collection of mini-reviews includes: Anatomy of Baseball The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Pittsburgh Pirates Almost a Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the 1980 Phillies Ty Cobb: Safe at Home Keeping Score Change Up: An Oral History of 8 Key Events That Shaped Baseball
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This list appeared on the SABR listserve (?). Thanks, to Greg Spira for compiling this extensive collection. Some of these review may be duplicate of what I’ve already posted and I have made no changes in style or contents to his list. “Links to many, many reviews (not features) of new baseball books reviews […]
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Titles include: The 33-Year-Old Rookie, by Coste The Dark Side of the Diamond, by Abrams My Bat Boy Days, by Garvey Playing with the Enemy, by Moore
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This overview of lots of new titles by Bruce Dancis leads off with books about the scandals of the game, new and old, and includes: Facing Clemens: Hitters on Confronting Baseball’s Most Intimidating Pitcher Asterisk: Home Runs, Steroids, and the Rush to Judgment Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle To Save Baseball (surprisingly […]
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Author Allen Barra submits his list of top books for the new season, including: Baseball Prospectus Change Up Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Legends You Can Observe a Lot by Watching, although I’m not sure why this is here, since it’s not new.
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I came across this 12-year-old article from Marylaine.com on baseball novels. It’s no less relevant now, and maybe, with the hindsight of time, can offer a few suggestions that might have gone unconsidered.
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An “all-time” list, including: Ball Four No Cheering in the Press Box, by Jerome Holtzman (an overlooked classic) Moneyball A Whole Different Ball Game, by Marvin Miller Clemente, by David Maraniss The Bill James Handbook Casey at the Bat
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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
* And now MY tops list
October 29, 2008
Humbly submitted via the pages of ForeWord Magazine, this non-fiction list of RK’s “essential” baseball reading. I’ll be working on a fiction version soon.
Tagged as: baseball books, Mini-reviews, Rankings
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