Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Paul Dickson, author of Baseball: The President’s Game (and most recently the third edition of his Baseball Dictionary), is featured in this Newsday article about Barack Obama and the long history of CoCs and the national pastime.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Now begins the backpedaling. Torre and Cashman are still pals, says this article by Jack Curry in today’s NY Times. And Richard Sandomir contributes this thoughtful column on the style the author’s used (third person): “a hybrid in the sphere of celebrity autobiographies, in which a star hires a writer to render his or her […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
It’s nice to know people are still reading the classics. This review of the Malamud novel comes from BaseballReflections.com
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
From Beyond the Box Score, this review of Brad Snyder’s book of the baseball rebel.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Hal Chase and the Mythology of the Game, by Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella (SportsClassic Books, 2004) as reviewed on Seamheads.com. Upshot: This volume is tremendously researched and the documentation presented from various newspapers hands the reader a first-hand impression that the interpretations of an author could never convey 90 years after the fact. It […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Seeking to make the most from the opportunity, Columbia University Press posted this little update after Charles A. Alexander, author of Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era (published by CUP in 2002), was interviewed the other day in The New York Times. I inadvertently omitted his book from a brief listing of others […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
It’s too late to attend the book-signing, but for those who are interested, there’s a re-issue of Honolulu Stadium: Where Hawaii Played as reported in the Honolulu Advertiser.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
It’s quite appropriate that baseball’s winter meetings are held around the holidays. If your team’s front office guys are good, you can get a swell present of a 40-home run slugger or Cy Young-caliber pitcher. Or you can get a lump of coal. It’s way too early to report on anything major, so in the […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
A Short History of the Long by, by Peter Keating (ESPN, 2006) Dingers is to literature what ESPN is to journalism. You can’t count on it to be serious, but it sure is fun. Keating’s work has appeared in a well-rounded series of publication. That is, he’s not just a sports guy, so he’s not […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
according to Michael Weinreb on ESPN.com’s Page 2 is Veeck: As In Wreck, the autobio of the game’s most maverick front office man (What, you thought the McCain/Palin campaign invented the word?) If there was ever a guy who didn’t take life too seriously, it was Bill Veeck, who made even the St. Louis Browns […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
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.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
There are several well-done books chronicling the contributions made by athletes to the military service of their country that I wanted to mention on this special day: Spartan Seasons: How Baseball Survived the Second World War, by Richard Goldstein (who writes such eloquent obituaries for The New York Times), (McMillan, 1980) They Also Served: Baseball […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
When the Commissioner tells owners not to pay too much in these tough economic times. The GM meetings are a preamble to the Winter Meetings, always fun for rumor-mongering, a time when fans of perennial losers or teams that are just laacking one piece of the puzzle hold out hope. There are several fascinating books […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Rapid Robert turned 90 on Nov. 3. Feller was one of those players from “the greatest generation” — including Ted Williams, Warren Spahn, Bob Buhl, Hank Greenberg, Joe DiMaggio and many others — who lost precious years to the service of their country. Yes, some, like Feller and Williams, were on the front lines while […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Bill Jordan of BaseballReflections.com critiques Dave Winfield’s “how-to-fix-it” title. Upshot: Overall, Winfield presents a very interesting argument and while some of his proposed bandages to this problem may be a bit much, especially at this time, he may be pointing the baseball world in the right direction. While his issues may have to take a […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Your new baseball world champs. Look for a new title (at least) will be added to the existing Phillies’ bibliography in the months to come.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
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.
{ 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
* At the risk of tooting my own horn…
November 26, 2008
Thirteen years in the making. In 1995, I delivered my first “scholarly paper.” It was at Hoftsra University’s centennial celebration of Babe Ruth’s birth and it was a hoot. I spent three days there, listening to all sorts of presentations, visiting exhibits and finally — nervously — making my own. My topic was “The Books […]
Tagged as: Babe Ruth
{ Comments on this entry are closed }