Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
First of all, congratulations to Ken W. of Charlotte, NC, winner of last week’s book, You Gotta Have Balls, by Brandon Steiner. Thank you all for your comments. This week’s offering is the paperback edition of Long Shot, by Mike Piazza and Lonnie Wheeler. Here’s my review of the book, which appeared on Bookreporter.com. A […]
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All of these came in this week from my “alma mater,” the University of Nebraska Press. So many books, so little time.
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This it the time of year when the baseball media offer their considered opinions on their favorite prospects. Sometimes they’re spot on, other times, not so much. So I thought, why not apply this to the upcoming “rookie crop” of baseball books? That is, titles that are making their debuts in 2014 — no reprints/reissues […]
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Yes, another book about Pete Rose. This one is by Kostya Kennedy, author of 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports, so I expect good things. One line that particularly caught my eye in the piece: “Kennedy told me his publicists don’t want him to talk about the book before its release […]
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Unlike the celebrities in this NY Times story, like Bob Uecker, famously does not sit in the front row. And to drive that point home, the Milwaukee Brewers will honor their long-time broadcaster with a statute in the last row at their home Miller Park. Uecker was the “star” of a number of Miller Lite […]
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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 […]
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Either he’s hurting for money or has a real hankering to show he’s a renaissance man. Whatever the reason, look for The Nolan Ryan Beef Cookbook at a bookstore near you — in May 2014. I have no idea why the publisher Little, Brown and Company chose to make the announcement so early, but there […]
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♦ Bill Jordan at Baseball Reflections posted this on The Baseball Hall of Shame: The Best of Blooperstown. Upshot: “With the book being built around blurbs, instead of lengthy stories, it is a quick read and would be something that is easy to browse through. One might even call this a good book to read […]
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♦ 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 […]
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Probably only a few die-hard Dodger fans or baseball historians remember, but Ed Stevens was the man Jackie Robinson replaced when he joined Brooklyn in 1947. I think it’s kind of sad that that is how a person is remembered (Wally Pipp), but at least he is remembered As the New York Times‘ obituary by […]
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Maybe it’s just the sports new cycles, but it seems there was a lot of emphasis on how young many of this year’s All-Stars were, juxtaposed with Chipper Jones, who is probably making his last appearance in the summer classic. (Did anyone else think his locker room “pep talk” was uncomfortable and stagey?) It occurred […]
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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
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 […]
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