Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Two for the price of one this weekend, as the Times publishes an overview of Howard Bryant’s The Last Hero (“Much of this has been told before — most vividly in Aaron’s autobiography, “I Had a Hammer.” Written with Lonnie Wheeler and published in 1992, it explores the tangled theme of baseball and race with […]
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Both the topics and the release dates of these books could be considered appropriate here. The first looks at Frank Deford’s The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball, while the second considers Mike Vacarro’s The First Fall Classic.
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The Boston Globe has been active on the baseball review front of late. Bill Nowlin, author of several titles on the Red Sox, contributed this piece on Howard Bryant’s bio of Hank Aaron for today’s edition. Yesterday, Bill Littlefield, host of NPR’s Only a Game, considered two baseball titles — Cardboard Gods by Josh Wilker […]
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At home plate posted this extensive review of James Hirsch’s bio of the Hall of Famer. Upshot: “This book is a feast for serious baseball aficionados and a veritable banquet for Giants fans. The sheer heft should not matter to those folks. They should plunge right in, especially those who remember the young Willie. A […]
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Would that be cool for the Miller brothers? This NY Times review of their movie, Touching Home, is a good start. You can also view an interview with Josh and Logan here. A reminder, the film premieres in NYC tonight at the Village East Cinema.
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The first of several attempts to try to get current with information about baseball books, etc. Edward Achorn, author of the new Hoss Radbourn bio, wrote about his experience at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books held earlier this month. Mark Kurlansky, author of Eastern Stars, was a guest on Southern California Public Radio. […]
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I was reading this New York Times review of Howard Bryant’s new biography, The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, when the title hit me. The Last Hero. What does that say about us? Are heroes just for kids? Have we become so jaded that such an idea seems old-fashioned? I probably say this […]
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Two baseball items of note in the May 7 issue of popular pop culture weekly: A story on Touching Home, the Miller Brother’s homage to their father, starring Ed Harris. By the way, the film makes its New York debut on May 14 at the Village East Cinema. Might be stopping by myself. If you […]
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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran this review of the Pirates’ Hall of Fame third baseman Pie Traynor: A Baseball Biography and Kiss It Goodbye, The Mystery, the Mormon and the Moral of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. The piece also links to reviews of Willie Mays: The Life the Legend; The Last Hero: A Life of Hank […]
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Tom Hoffarth concludes his “30 baseball books in 30 days of ’10” feature with a nice shout-out to Bill Lewers and his Six Decades of Baseball: A Personal Narrative. I will be doing my own assessment of this one in the not-too-distant future, but Lewers sersve as a reminder that just because you’re not in […]
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Man, I wish I had this type of article from Newsweek for other parts of daily life. Imagine: We eat it so you don’t have to. We go to work so you don’t have to. We argue with the wife so you don’t have to. We (fill in the blank) so you don’t have to. […]
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There’s something supernatural about a review of a book that hasn’t been published yet, but it doesn’t seem to be stopping anyone from opining on Stephen King’s upcoming baseball novella, Blockade Billy. From Publishers Weekly: A quirky baseball player with a past shrouded in secrecy is the tragic hero of this macabre tale from the […]
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by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (2003; Picador Translation 2009) I can’t even remember where I heard of this title but I’m glad I did. Ogawa tells a touching story about a Japanese housekeeper, her 10-year-old son, and her professional charge, a former mathematics professor with an unusual disability, which was the result of […]
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Some additional baseball book roundups: The Chicago Tribune: Willie Mays: The Life , The Legend; Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards; Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride through Baseball and America in the Swinging ‘70s; and Are We Winning? Fathers and Sons in the Golden Age of Baseball The Cleveland […]
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An ambitious task, but Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News is taking up the challenge once again as he highlights an eclectic group of titles for 2010 with a mix of humor and insight in his blog, “Farther off the Wall.” Today’s pick is Tim Salmon’s Always an Angel: Playing the Game with […]
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Veteran journalist Daniel Okrent has launched a web site to promote his new book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Frankly, it’s kind of bare bones, but it does include a page (mostly blurbs) about 9 Innings: The Anatomy of Baseball Game, originally published in 1984 and revised in 2000. Here’s a review […]
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Jeff Pearlman weighs in, briefly, on two new titles: 90% of the Game is Half Mental, by Emma Span (“Stellar”), and The Baseball Codes, by Turbow and Duca (“especially fascinating. Bulldog effort.”).
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Here’s a sneak preview of The New York Times Sunday Book Review: (Grateful for the opportunity to reproduce the cool graphic that ran with the piece.) Bruce Weber, author of As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires, gives his take on The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: […]
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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
May 22, 2010
SFReeper critiques Emma Span’s look at the game from the distaff side and Jason Turbow’s do’s and dont’s. If the British read Moneyball, do they have to convert it into pounds or euros? The AV Club conducted this Q&A with Dan Epstein, author of Big Hair & Plastic Grass. You gotta wonder if he grew […]
Tagged as: baseball books
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