Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
In a sense — and as much as I have loved them since childhood — I don’t know why they bother with these print editions anymore. You know a good portion of the information will change by the end of spring training, if not sooner, rendering some of the speculation and predictions useless. For example, […]
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I can’t remember so much chatter on the web about the selections for the Hall of Fame as this year, both before the elections were held and after Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven were voted in. Most are all about comparisons: why Player A should be in, especially if similar Player B was elected. The […]
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Three baseball entries are among the non-fiction titles on The New York Times as “100 Notable Books of 2010.” THE LAST BOY: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood. By Jane Leavy. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Many biographies of Mantle have been written, but Leavy connects the dots in new and disturbing ways. THE LAST HERO: […]
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Speaking of USA Today and disregarding what I just said about lessening the load… This is a nice little recap of the 2010 season. I especially enjoyed Nicole Auerbach’s month-by-month review, featuring dates to remember, special events, and sundry topics. Of major note are the team pages which analyze 2011 and beyond. However, I question […]
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Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, wrote this profile of Texas Rangers president and Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan in this Oct. 3 Sunday Times Magazine. I like Ryan. He’s old school. None of the pitch-count BS. […]
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You know the Mets are out of it when The New York Times no longer prints detailed Stories about the games, even the victories. Friday’s paper carried just nine paragraphs about the previous night’s 3-2 loss to the Astros. Saturday’s edition (at least the one we received by delivery): seven following the Amazins’ 7-2 break-out […]
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“Strausburg listed as day to day.” Well, that didn’t take very long, did it? More here, via The Washington Post.
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James Traub has two piece in this weekend’s Times: A critique of The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macorís, by Mark Kurlansky in the book review section (which the critic deems a “charming and finely observed, if somewhat formless, baseball travelogue”), and a profile of Yankees’ reliever Mariano […]
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Marc Tracy, who writes for the online Tablet magazine, publishes the Times‘ big baseball roundup, which appears in the June 6 issue. This year’s titles include: Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, a 50th anniversary reprinting (in book form) of John Updike’s iconic paean to Ted Williams in his last game Mint Condition, by Dave Jamieson […]
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Two for the price of one this weekend, as the Times publishes an overview of Howard Bryant’s The Last Hero (“Much of this has been told before — most vividly in Aaron’s autobiography, “I Had a Hammer.” Written with Lonnie Wheeler and published in 1992, it explores the tangled theme of baseball and race with […]
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Today’s Wall Street Journal ran this extensive article about the differences (and similarities) between Met and Yankee fans. I took a brief on-line interactive survey, which rendered me — incorrectly — a fan of the Bronx bombers. (Only 14 people took the poll, which indicates that WSJ readers have better things to do with their […]
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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran this review of the Pirates’ Hall of Fame third baseman Pie Traynor: A Baseball Biography and Kiss It Goodbye, The Mystery, the Mormon and the Moral of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. The piece also links to reviews of Willie Mays: The Life the Legend; The Last Hero: A Life of Hank […]
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While The New York Times seems to be shrinking — both in trim and number of pages — The Wall Street Journal is trying to expand its grab by introducing a “Greater New York” section with more local coverage, including more sports reporting. If you haven’t checked it out, you should. Nice feature articles, entertaining […]
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This article appeared in the April 15 edition of the New Jersey Jewish News. Tempered with the excitement of Opening Day, some baseball fans have to contend with the end of a tradition, even if it was only a few years old: 2010 marks the final release of the Jewish Major Leaguer card set. According […]
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Less and less, it seems the answer to this age-old riddle is newspapers. Speaking from personal and practical experience, we have cut the stand-alone sports section at my weekly publication; instead I write the occasional sports-related piece. One kind old soul called to complain. He suggested we ditch the obituaries and put back the sports […]
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Traditionally, this is the time of year when newspapers (remember those?) run round-ups of baseball book reviews (like this one by yours truly on Bookreporter.com). They’re good for those with short attention spans, since they tend to cover multiple titles briefly (but then, if that’s your problem, how will you get through the books themselves?). […]
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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
Behind the Times
February 1, 2011
Not sure what’s going on at the “paper of record” lately. Maybe it’s staff cuts. But here are two stories that appeared recently on the pages of the newspaper that appeared elsewhere some time ago. Gil Meche turned down the last year of a $12 million contract because he knew he wouldn’t be able to […]
Tagged as: Gil Meche, Honus Wagner baseball card
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