Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
From the Baseball-Reference.com Bullpen: San Francisco’s Gaylord Perry connects for his first Major League homer, to beat the Dodgers, 7 – 3. The previous year, Giants’ manager Alvin Dark had remarked that “They’ll put a man on the moon before he hits a home run.” Perry’s homer comes about 20 minutes after the club house […]
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My annual Spring Baseball Book Roundup was recently posted to the Bookreporter.com site. Titles include: 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella Uppity: My Untold Story About the Games People Play The House That Ruth Built: A New Stadium, the […]
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The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, located in Commack, NY, opened an exhibit in December in celebration of Sandy Koufax’s 75th birthday. The paintings, photographs, and other bric-a-brac have been assembled by Alan Freedman, director of the Hall into a beautiful paperback volume, Sandy Koufax: 32 at 75. Fans of baseball/sports art will immediately […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Feb 4, at 10 a.m. Title Rank General Baseball Prospectus 2011 1 Baseball America 2011 Prospect Handbook: The 2011 Expert Guide to Baseball Prospects and MLB Organization Rankings (Baseball America Prospect Handbook) 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis (Kindle […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Jan. 21 at 9 p.m. Title Rank General Baseball Prospectus 2011 1 Baseball America 2011 Prospect Handbook: The 2011 Expert Guide to Baseball Prospects and MLB Organization Rankings (Baseball America Prospect Handbook) 2 The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by […]
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Craig Biggio, the last player to join the 3,000-hit club, turns 45 today. The book on him: Biggio: The Final Game. Honorary mention: Scott Hatteberg. Who’s he, you ask? Basically, Hatteberg — who walked 562 and struck out just 503 times and had a .361 OBP over his 14-year career — was one of the […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Nov. 19 at 10 a.m. Title Rank General The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 1 Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton and Tim Keown 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Nov. 5 at Noon. Title Rank General The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 1 Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton and Tim Keown 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, […]
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Several high-profile ballplayers share Oct. 20 as a birthday. Tops on the list: Mickey Mantle. There are dozens of books about The Mick. Many of the more recent ones examines his flaws as a person well as his strengths as an athlete, including Jane Leavy’s just-published The Last Boy. Since this book — and by […]
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SI‘s Joe Posnanski picks his 32 favorite covers in the 50+ history of the magazine here. They’re not all baseball, but as Spencer Tracy said in Pat and Mike, “what’s there is cherce.”
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, July 2. Title Rank General Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 1 Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball, by Bill Madden 2 The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by Scott Turbow […]
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Yankees.baseball-news-update.com posted reviews of two titles: Dayn Perry’s Reggie Jackson, and 1921, by Spatz and Steinberg. While the writer deems both to be “serious and thoughtful volumes displaying highly impressive research…. neither book quite fully succeeds.” A celebrity first pitch I’d love to see: A profile in Smithsonian Magazine outs Harper Lee, author of the […]
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by Dan Fost. MVP Books, 2010. A book such as Giants Past & Present caters to multiple readerships. On the one hand you have long-time fans of the team, both in the East and West Coast incarnations. You also have younger fans, who grew up on the San Francisco version. In addition, there are the […]
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That seems to be theme in most of these Daily News “baseball cards” shots of the Mets and Yankees. In another marketing ploy, the Daily News will be publishing its baseball preview on Thursday, rather than the usual Sunday before Opening Day. I’m guessing they realize people buy the Sunday paper regardless of content, but […]
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One of the things you really notice at Yankees Fantasy Camp — and I’m sure it’s the same at all the others — is the omnipresence of photographers. Team pictures, action shots, posed “candid” shots, photos at the dinners, et al. People love having their pictures taken with celebrities. So why did it take so […]
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This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Feb. 19. Title Rank General Baseball Prospectus 2010 1 Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch 2 Baseball America 2010 Prospect Handbook: The Comprehensive Guide to Rising Stars from the Definitive Source on Prospects 3 2010 Baseball Forecaster (Ron Shandler’s Baseball […]
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So many calendars, so little time. (Hmm.) Picked up a day-by-day calendar for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum for the new year. I usually have a problem keeping up with the task of tearing off that one page, but with this one, it’s all I can do to keep from sneaking a […]
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This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com on Friday, January 1. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Title Rank General The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 2 The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story […]
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So if you haven’t gotten your literary sports fan anything yet, here are some suggestions from Joe Favorito, a specialist in sports branding. You’ll have to winnow out the baseball titles from the rest. Same for Stiletto Sport’s list (sorry if I sound chauvanistic, but only a women’s list could consider Alyssa Milano’s Safe at […]
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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
