Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Tris who? Sid Dorfman laments the anonymity that has befallen Hall of Fame outfielder Tris Speaker, who was the centerfielder before Mantle and Mays came along. Dorfman is a local legend here in Jersey. He’s been writing for the Newark Star-Ledger for more than 70 years, our version of The Washington Post’s Shirley Povich. There’s […]
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From rationalmagic.com, this critique of the graphic novel, The Golem’s Mighty Swing. More on Golem: From TIME Magazine From PopMatters.com From FlakMag.com Several panels, courtesy of New Yorker From Nine, a scholarly baseball journal published by the University of Nebraska Press
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A blast from the past courtesy of the Lansing State Journal. Upshot: …[O]ne book is not responsible for the seismic shift in sports media during the past 40 years, or even the past five years. But it’s part of it, and Bouton’s book is among the first insights that the game, the strategy and the […]
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I’m surprised Peter Golenbock’s ribald tale of Mickey Mantle hasn’t hit the remaindered bin yet. Lasorda’s I Live for This got the treatment just a few months after it published. Anyway, here an excerpt from the audio book as read by Alan Smithee. http://audible.edgeboss.net/download/audible/content/bk/pnix/000053/bk_pnix_000053_sample.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
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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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The recent release of the Indiana Jones movie allows for the tangential connection with Haunted Baseball: Ghosts, Curses, Legends and Eerie Events, wherein coauthor Mickey Bradley is interviewed for this piece in Newsday.
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Catching up a bit: Bob Murcer’s autobiography as reviewed on MLB.com The Griddle on Baseballtoaster.com considers Peter Morris’ latest, But Didn’t We Have Fun? wickedlocal.com, a Massachusetts Web site, reports on an appearance by author Jim Collins at a Cape Cod high school. Collins is the author of The Last Best League: One Summer, One […]
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By Alison Gordon (left). Interesting concept, this “Blue Jays Library in a Box,” from battersbox.ca. Might catch on. Pity there aren’t a lot of books on the subject.
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The surprising member of the Hall of Fame was born this date in 1921. I say surprising because his numbers seem less than impressive, compared with his contemporaries. He had “only” four seasons in which he won more than 20 games and his career total of 207 victories in 17 seasons (some were parts of […]
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Some new stuff, some old in this mini-review.
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Born this date in 1881. The Hall of Famer spent most of his career pitching with pre-Black Sox White Sox for whom he won 195 games. Talk about records that will never be broken, what about this one: Walsh’s career ERA was 1.82! The Amazon Report on Ed Walsh: Big Ed Walsh: The Life and […]
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The two-time NL batting champion and Hall of Fame inductee (1962), was born this date in 1893. Roush was a member of the Cincinnati Reds that faced the White Sox in the 1919 World Series. The Amazon Report on Edd Roush: Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 […]
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The Negro League star, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000, was born this date in 1901. The Amazon Report on Turkey Stearnes: Turkey Stearnes and the Detroit Stars: The Negro Leagues in Detroit, 1919-1933
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The Mystique, Superstition, and Lore of Baseball’s Uniform Numbers by Jack Looney. An assessment by Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated as he seeks to determine who the best player was for each uniform number. An error in the on-line article: Deitsch writes, “For research we culled through dozens and dozens of media guides, some terrific […]
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The Hall of Famer from Mobile turns 77 (!) today. No need to go into his exploits here. Suffice it to say that he is one of the most legendary players ever to don flannels, a fact that is born out by the number of books written about him, especially for kids; you know a […]
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Andrea Weaver hosts a tribute site for David Strathairn, the actor who portrayed the knuckle-balling White Sox pitcher in Eight Men Out. She devotes an entire page to his accomplishments as an actor and surprisingly convincing athlete. Factoid: Strathairn’s sone, Tery, played the role of Bucky, one of the little kids who idolized the Sox […]
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Time to play catch-up again. From Great Britain’s Guardian, this article about Billy Beane and the Moneyball phenomenon. Why on earth would it appear in a British paper? Because Beane is “Tottenham Hotspur fanatic, as well as a fan of the team’s coach, Sir Alex Ferguson. A list of recommended baseball novels from the Campaign […]
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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
