Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road celebrated its 50th anniversary in September, an event feted by re-releases of the watershed oeuvre and other events. According to Bloomberg.com: The New York Public Library offers an exhibition of Kerouaciana that includes about 60 feet of the scroll unrolled in a long display case, numerous notebooks, a fantasy baseball […]
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…without some writer referring to the Michael Lewis book on effective baseball business management to explain how a given team was put together in an conventionial way. Here’s the latest, on the Rockies, from Slate.com.
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Now that the Sox are back in the Fall Classic, speculation is rampant over the effect this will have on the publishing industry. The year after the 2004 World Series victory — the team’s first in more than 85 years, David Green published 101 Reasons to Love the Red Sox: And 10 Reasons to Hate […]
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With the Red Sox on the verge of elimination from the ALCS, from Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe, with emphasis added: If any team knows how to recover from an ALCS deficit, it’s the Red Sox. Boston wrote the book (which yielded approximately 26 books the following spring), beating the Yankees four straight times […]
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Thanks to the powers that be for producing two sessions of top notch baseball stories read at Manhattan’s Symphony Space. The stories in this section, which aired on Sept. 28, 2007 by Public Radio International, include: James T. Farrell, “My Grandmother Goes to Comiskey Park,” read by John Shea (from My Baseball Diary, Southern Illinois […]
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Some books about the teams in the League Championship Series to browse through while you’re waiting for those interminable changes. These are by no means the only or best titles, just general, all-purpose suggestions. As an aside, It’s interesting to note that the ALCS features two of the original teams, while the NLCS has two […]
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From the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, as the Indians prepare for the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox, one writer’s opinion about the best books on the game. I always find it interesting how faux fans crawl out of the woodwork at this time of year, especially when FOX broadcasts the World Series, stocking […]
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Long before there was the San Diego Chicken and the Philly Phanatic, two Jewish ballplayers — more entertaining for their amusing antics than their prowess on the field — were crowned the “Clown Princes of Baseball.” Born in 1892, Al Schacht grew up in an Orthodox household. He pitched with middling success for the minor […]
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World’s oldest Jewish ex-major leaguer tells all Just over 60 years ago — Sept. 13, 1947 — Mickey Rutner hit his only major league home run. He did it as a member of the Philadelphia Athletics in an 8-2 win over the Chicago White Sox. Rutner, who has made his retirement home in Georgetown, Tex., […]
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From Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art, and Writing About It a Game, the famed baseball writer offers his favorite dozen reads, including: Nice Guys Finish Last by Leo Durocher with Ed Linn (Simon and Schuster, 1975). (Co-winner) Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris (Alfred A. Knopf, 1956). The Glory of Their […]
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From time to time, various writers, editors, publications, etc., will offer their list of “best” or “essential” baseball titles. So from time to time I’ll pass them on, FYI, with or without comment. First up, from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, two members of the Brewers front office and a local college professor weigh in on […]
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Apropos to yesterday’s post on The Babe Ruth Story, these are the only baseball books to make the top spot on The New York Times Best-Seller list, along with the dates of their “coronation”: The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn, May 28, 1972 (a total of 24 weeks on the list) Summer of ’49, […]
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They don’t make ’em like this anymore. At least not lately. The Whole Baseball Catalogue, edited by John Thorn and Bob Carroll (A Fireside Book, published by Simon and Schuester, 1990) has an excellent chapter on “Going by the Book: Baseball Between the Covers.” “You can have a complete library for approximately what it costs […]
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From the Charleston Post and Courier, a review of HOME RUN: The Definitive History of Baseball’s Ultimate Weapon, by David Vincent (Potomac Books). David Vincent hits it out of the park with “Home Run.” But he must be charged with an error. The error being: only two pages of the book deal with the steroid […]
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August 18 marked the 40th anniversary of the near-fatal beaning of Boston Red Sox star Tony Congiliaro. Author David Cataneo portrays Tony C. as a hometown product. Handsome, talented, and tremendously popular the slugger amassed 100 home runs at a very young age and was touted by some as the next big thing. But a […]
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This list includes more than 125 reviews. Some are the books are duplicated by different reviewers.
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This is a sad day for Carmen and me. Phil was a gem, one of the greatest people I ever knew – a dear friend and great teammate. He was a heck of a player, too. When I first came up to the Yankees, he was like a big, actually small, brother to me. He’s […]
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With the passing of Phil “The Scooter” Rizzuto today, I thought it appropriate to “reprint” a precious entry on his “poetry-inspired” book, O Holy Cow. —– A program on the Feb. 10, 2007 broadcast of NPR’s Only a Game had an interesting topic, Shakepeare as Sport. It reminded me of a review I did on […]
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As a stand-alone from the previous entry about baseball fiction, I found an extensive list of science fiction/baseball stories, as compiled by Steven Silver. Many of these have appeared in various SF pulp anthologies, rather than as full out novels. I don’t know if I’d agree with each entry; for example, I wonder if some […]
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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
With God on our side
October 25, 2007
Another piece from Slate.com about the Rockies, who caused a star awhile back because of their penchant for looking heavenward for strength. While the piece, a reprint from 2000, looks primarily at football, the subject of religion applies across sports lines. It also links to the Rockies’ “emphasis on Christianity first reported by USA Today […]
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