Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Defining the National Pastime, edited by Paul Dickson. Dover, 2011. In a word, Baseball is… great fun. Okay, so that’s two words, so sue me. The small, square paperback contains the wisdom of the ages when it comes to distilling the history of the game into a few sentences. There are plenty of larger books […]
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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 Two Lives of Roy Campanella, by Neil Lanctot. Simon and Schuster, 2011. My first thoughts when I heard about this book was, “It’s about time.” Roy Campanella was a three-time NL MVP and a Hall of Famer, yet aside from It’s Good to Be Alive, his own ghostwritten autobiography, there have been no “adult” […]
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Apropos of the review I posted the other day of Jerome Charyn’s new biography Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil, I wanted to point out that the book has a web presence of its own. Should be interesting to peruse; some are baseball sites, some are not.
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(and other media, of course.) With the close of 2010, I thought I take a few moments to review the highlights of the past 12 months as pertains to our favorite topic. It’s been a banner year for baseball biographies. We’ve enjoyed munch-anticipated titles from major publishers on Hall of Famers such as Hank Aaron, […]
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I was looking for a computer disc to my digital tape recorder this morning. I recently got a new computer and was unable to find the software that would allow me to put up the audio interviews and update the podcasts when I came across a review I did on Bob Feller: Ace of the […]
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I’ve been putting this off for a long time, basically out of a sense that I had more important things to do, which is more a failing of mine than the actual truth. I’m speaking here of the fan memoir, a book of recollections and anecdotes taken not from the life of a famous athlete, […]
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Speaking of USA Today and disregarding what I just said about lessening the load… This is a nice little recap of the 2010 season. I especially enjoyed Nicole Auerbach’s month-by-month review, featuring dates to remember, special events, and sundry topics. Of major note are the team pages which analyze 2011 and beyond. However, I question […]
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Baseball lifer George “Birdie” Tebbetts was born on this date in 1912. A catcher, he spent 14 seasons as an active player before taking of the managerial reins of the Cincinnati Redlegs, as they were called in the early 1950s during the Communist scare, as per this Wikipedia entry: “Twice in the 1950s (the McCarthy […]
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Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Janey Leavy. Harper, 2010. If she’s not careful, Jane Leavy will earn a reputation as the Boswell of the battered ballplayer. In 2002, she wrote the definitive biography (to this point) of the role model to Jewish boomers everywhere in Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy. In […]
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A handful of players have been fortunate enough to enjoy a storybook ending to their career: ending with a bang. None have done it with as much mystique as Ted Williams. The Splendid Splinter played his last major league game against the Baltimore Orioles on September 28, 1960. A dreary affair, with nothing on the […]
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The Yankee Hater Memoirs, 1953-2005, by Gene Hutmaker and (with some reluctance) Michael A. Hutmaker, VirtualBookWorm, 2006. Not every author has the luxury — or even necessity — of working with a large publishing company. More and more these days, writers are going solo, finding alternate ways of getting their work to the public. Gene […]
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Spurred on by the hubbub around the 40th anniversary of Ball Four, Delia Cabe, who hosts the Creative Type blog at Boston.com, had this piece about the best baseball books, not just from her POV, but from those of local celebrities and others. And as the Baseball Reliquary program heralding that anniversary beckons, look for […]
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My Life in the Game, by Dustin Pedroia wuth Edward J. Delaney. SSE, 2009. In past entries, I’ve written about “flavor of the month,” a memoir or autobio written by a player with limited Major League experience who tries to capitalize on a special event or a great season? Born to Play falls into this […]
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Conversations with 17 Former Jewish Major League Baseball players, by Dave Cohen. Havenhurst Books, 2010. Hot on the heels, but apparently unconnected with the new documentary Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, we have this new oral history collection conducted by Cohen, described on the publisher’s website as “the familiar radio voice of Georgia […]
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Baseball in Folklore and Fiction, by Tristram Potter Coffin Rvive Books, 2010 Originally published as The Old Ball Game in 1971, The Mudville Heritage considers the hugely different way in which baseball was portrayed in the early to mid half of the 20th century. Coffin, emeritus professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, takes […]
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by Peter Golenbock. The Lyons Press, 2007. When 7 came out a few years ago, many sportswriters — especially in the New York area — considered it a shande (shame). How could Golenbock — who had heretofore published only non-fiction — have besmirched the character of the late lamented Mickey Mantle with this trashy, borderline […]
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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
A few thoughts on The Tenth Inning
October 15, 2010 · 1 comment
While writing up the previous entry and reading the Forbes’ review of Ken Burns’ addenda, I was reminded that I wanted to add my two cents. The Forbes‘ writer thought there was too much information crammed into too little time. In one sense I agree, but perhaps if less time had been allotted for certain […]
Tagged as: "The Tenth Inning", baseball documentary, Ken Burns
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