Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
As many of you know, I serve as editor of the SABR Bibliography Committee quarterly newsletter. The most recent issues (Nov. 2011), features reviews on Under Pallor, Under Shadow: The 1920 American League Pennant Race That Rattled and Rebuilt Baseball, by Bill Felber; 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in […]
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Someone who doesn’t think The Art of Fielding is Abner Doubleday’s gift to baseball. Or something like that; it’s all about the metaphors. Richard Peterson, an author and editor of books on the national pastime, published this critique in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which starts off The celebration of “The Art of Fielding” as the […]
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Now that we’re headed into the cold dark days, it’s time to cozy up with some baseball reading. This serves a few purposes. For one thing, it keeps your mind on the game. Secondly, with all this time, you can branch out and pick up a few titles you either didn’t have time for it […]
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Haven’t done one of these in a long time. Then again, haven’t done blogging in general on a regular basis in a long time. Yogi Berra loves the movies. In fact, he used to have a regular gig as a reviewer for ______. In this Wall Street Journal piece by Jason Gay, Berra shares his […]
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The Jewish Review of Books (shouldn’t that be Review of Jewish Books?) ran this review of Mark Kurlansky’s recent biography, Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want To Be One. The piece begins with a reference to Mark Helprin’s short story, “Perfection,” which “re-imagined Bernard Malamud’s “Natural” as an adolescent Holocaust survivor whose otherworldly ability […]
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Take heart, Houston. You may have the worst team in the Majors this season, but you can relive past glorious and otherwise amuse yourselves by reading these Astros-related titles, posted by Ray Kerby and Darrell Pittman on AstrosDaily.com.
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Okay, so I was wrong about the front page part, but The Art of Fielding got another review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review section. And it’s another glowstick. The Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal ran this, but the author is a local boy, so what else are they going to say? More: * The New […]
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Will this book every get a middling review? First The New York Times calls it “not only a wonderful baseball novel — it zooms immediately into the pantheon of classics, alongside “The Natural” by Bernard Malamud and “The Southpaw” by Mark Harris — but it’s also a magical, melancholy story about friendship and coming of […]
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They might as well just hand this guy the Pulitzer already and save the rest of the authors the time. But can anyone tell me of the top of his or her head what “chiaroscuro” means?
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Greg Spira passed along this link to an NJ.com review of five New York-centric books, including (with a “symbolic” thumbs up-thumbs down): 1961: The Inside Story of the Maris-Mantle Home Run Chase, by Phil Pepe (-) Donnie Baseball: The Definitive Biography of Don Mattingly, by Mike Shalin (-) Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The […]
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The good news: More than half way to the goal of 501 books. The bad news: it takes me away from the blog. Oh well, hang around. It will be worth it in the end. In the meantime, here are a few items for your consideration: Out of Left Field, Rebecca Alpert’s history of Jewish […]
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As I continue to do research for my own project, I get a kick when I find some old material that confirms I’m on the right track with some of my selections. Hey, it’s nice to find validation rom time to time, right? So today’s blast from the past is this brief appearance by the […]
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While doing research for my project, I came across this list, published in 2002, of the 100 top sports books of all time as chosen by the editors of Sports Illustrated. Of those 100, “only” 32 were about baseball. The nerve. Anyway, here’s the SI piece, trimmed to just baseball titles, with commentary from the […]
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Combining two themes here to bring you some recent podcasts. * Craig Robinson, author of the new Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure (See all Humor Books), was on the July 19 edition of Slate’s Hang Up and Listen. There are several excellent questions about Robinson’s though processes as he comes up with […]
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The first of what will probably be several lists/suggestions: Linda Holmes, over at Monkey See, the pop culture blog for NPR, offered a selection of five sports books for the summer, including Stan Musial: An American Life by George Vecsey. And, what the heck, there’s enough info to consider Scorecasting a baseball book, too. This […]
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The semi-regular roundup of things I neglected to post previously. From DriveLineBaseball, this review of The Physics of Pitching: Learn the Mechanics, Science, and Psychology of Pitching to Success. Upshot: It “falls well short of [Robert K.} Adair’s classic text [The Physics of Baseball]. Sure, it looks a lot cooler (the photography is top notch), […]
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Marc Tracy of Tablet.com contributed reviews for the NY Times Sunday book supplement on Shawn Green’s The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 MPH. Upshot: “Those who do not share Green’s earnestness — or fondness for “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” “Siddhartha” and other namedropped works of dormitory Buddhism — may nonetheless […]
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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
Who should review?
September 21, 2011
I’ve been in a cave most of the time, so it’s just now dawning on me: When it comes to movies and books like Moneyball and The Art of Fielding (which you just know is going to be turned into a feature film before too long), who should be considered the more credible reviewers? Should […]
Tagged as: Apollo 13, Brad Pitt, Hardball Times, Moneyball
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