Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
John Sexton’s Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game picked up a couple of review recently including this one from the New York Law Journal and this one from Philly.com. The San Diego Union Tribune ran this about Inside the Baseball Hall of Fame. Believe it or not (and I’m guessing my […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Just because it’s my birthday… Born this date: Lou Brissie (1924), subject of Ira Berkow’s engaging The Corporal Was a Pitcher: The Courage of Lou Brissie. Mike Coolbaugh (1972), subject of S.L. Price’s touching Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America. Also on this date: 1977 – The Dodgers retire […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
In an attempt to clean out all the accumulated links from my Google alerts, this will incorporate the semi-regular “review roundups” with author announcements, etc. You’ll also forgive me if some of these have appeared before; I’m just too damn lazy to go through each one to double-check. My Apologies. Anyway, enjoy. Five nostalgic books […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Michigan Live posted this review on John Rosengren’s new biography, Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes. Upshot: “Rosengren…lovingly describes the devotion of American Jews to a man who overcame harassment and flat feet to become not just a baseball star, but an inspiration to his people.” Here’s something you don’t see everyday: a British book […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Lest we forget: 1991 – Cool Papa Bell, Negro League outfielder; Hall of Famer (b. 1903) Cool Papa Bell (Baseball Hall of Famers of the Negro Leagues), by Shaun McCormack, Rosen Publishing Group, 2002. On this date: 1919 – Christy Mathewson, back from the World War I, rejoins the New York Giants as pitching coach […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Lest we forget: 1950 – Kiki Cuyler, outfielder; All-Star, Hall of Famer (b. 1898) Hazen “Kiki” Cuyler: A Baseball Biography, by Ronald Waldo, McFarland 2012. 2011 – Chuck Tanner, outfielder, manager (b. 1928) Chuck Tanner’s baseball playbook, by Tanner with Jim Enright, Rutledge/Mayflower Book, 1981 Also on this date: 1985 – Minnesota Twins first baseman […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Shelby Whitfield, the former play-by-play announcer for the Washington Senators who wrote Kiss it goodbye (1973), a critical book about the team’s owner in the early 1970s and later managed an all-star cast of announcers for ABC Radio, died Feb. 5 at a rehabilitation facility in Jackson, NJ. He was 77. According to Whitfield’s obituary […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
A new feature whereby I account for things pertaining to a general theme of “Today in Baseball Books.” (Source: www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/January_30) Literary birthday greetings: Davey Johnson, infielder, manager; All-Star (1943) Bats, by Davey Johnson and Peter Golenbock, Putnam, 1986. Also on this date: 1936 – The new owners of the Boston Braves conduct a survey of […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Larry Ruttman, a fellow UNP author, is about to publish American Jews and America’s Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball, a collection of interviews. James Bailey, my main”competitor,” posted this abbreviated list of what he considers some classic of baseball fiction, include some obscure titles not associated with the superlative, wish as Season […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
With so many books I haven’t gotten to, I find it almost wasteful to reread books I’ve enjoyed (who would revisit one they didn’t enjoy? That’s like saying “this is a picture of me when I was younger.” As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “Every picture of you is when you were younger.” […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Today marks the “official” beginning of American involvement in World War II, spurred by the attack on Pearl Harbor. There are several excellent books that note the toll the War took on the national pastime, as well as the role baseball had in keeping up the country’s morale. Among them: Spartan Seasons: How Baseball Survived […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
It’s the Winter Baseball Meetings, which runs through Dec. 6 in Nashville (so I guess it doesn’t have to be a heavy overcoat). I came across this item from SB Nation about the meetings and it reminded me of Josh Lewin’s Getting in the Game: Inside Baseball’s Winter Meetings, published in 2003. Lewin, who currently […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
♦ Here’s an oldie but a goodie via eBay: a copy of H. Allen Smith’s classic Rhubarb, about a cat who inherits a baseball team. ♦ The novel was turned into a 1951 feature film starring Ray Milland (who was also the lead in the 1949 baseball comedy It Happens Every Spring), Jan Stirling, Gene […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The baseball “lifer” passed away on Nov. 8 at the age of 95. Here’s the NY Times obit, written by Richard Goldstein. MacPhail published his autobiography — My 9 Innings: An Autobiography of 50 Years in Baseball — in 1989. A new copy goes for about $150 on Amazon. in 2000, G. Richard McKelvey published […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
A semi-occasional attempt to catch up on various items of literary (and other) interest. ♦ Keith Eggener published this nicely-illustrated piece on “The Demolition and Afterlife of Baltimore Memorial Stadium” on designobserver.com. I love finding baseball items from sources that are about as far away from baseball as you can get. ♦ As mentioned in […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
♦ The Washington Post published this piece on Tony La Russa’s memoir, One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season. ♦ Better late than never: It seems the Seattle Post-Intelligencer finally got around to posting a review of Zack Hample’s 2007 publication, Watching Baseball Smarter: […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
♦ The Summer 2012 issue of Jewish Currents features a review by Cynthia Werthamer of Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League, by former IBL hurler Aaron Pribble. Upshot: “While Pribble’s book could do with less foreshadowing…, his retelling of the ups and downs […]
{ 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
Bits and pieces
August 30, 2012
Time for the occasional declutter of the accumulated links and stories, so here goes. “Dan Barry’s Bottom of the 33rd has won the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, which honors a nonfiction book on the subject of sports.” More here. From the Yogi Berra Museum: Former Yankee star second baseman Bobby Richardson, a cornerstone […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }