Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Baseball GB posted this review of Roger Angell’s 2004 collection. An amazing amount of the book can be read here, thanks to Google Books. Like any master storyteller, Angell’s work translates well to audio. This sample from audio.com comes from The Summer Game, another collection of his essays that appear mostly in The New Yorker […]
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Rick Cleveland’s biography (published by Lemuria Press) of Boo Ferriss, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox from 1945-50, as glowingly reviewed in the Clarksdale (MS) Press Register. Ferriss, a Mississippi product, won 21 and 25 games in his first two major league seasons, 12 the next year and never in double figures again.
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Another look at the new classic on shooting down baseball myths, by The Joy of Sox blog. Upshot: For those of you thinking “Who cares?” or “Why ruin a good story?”, stay away from this book. But if you’re as curious as I am about how Neyer went about his investigations and when he found […]
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And no, we’re not advocating burning them. This piece from the Pride of the Yankees blog on NJ.com features 101 Reasons to Love the Yankees, Babe Ruth: Remembering the Bambino in Stories, Photos & Memorabilia, and Remembering Yankee Stadium: An Oral and Narrative History of “The House That Ruth Built”
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From Weaver’s Tantrum, a blog that concentrates on the Baltimore Orioles, this review of Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s classic title.
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A regional title announced in the pages of The Telegraph-Herald of Dubuque, Iowa. I’m including it just as much for the audio rendition as the brief story itself. For one thing, how could a visually-impaired person be able to find the link? And, at the risk of being un-PC, the computer-generated voice sounds like Stephen […]
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From one of my “competitors,” the GreatBaseballBooks blog, this brief item on David Surdam’s The Postwar Yankees: Baseball’s Golden Age Revisited. Upshot: Surdam’s writing is straightford [sic] but not boring. If you need to read something by an economist, you could do much worse.
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Alex Belth, author of Stepping Up: The Story of All-Star Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Players’ Rights, posts a list of book suggestions on his Brxon Banter blog (say that fast 10 times). About half of them seem to be those titles commemorating Yankee Stadium.
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Mike Lynch, who hosts the always thought-provoking Seamheads.com, penned (keyboarded?) this review of Babe Dahlgren’s biography. The twist? It was written by Dahlgren’s grandson, Matt, who is seeking to exonerate charges that Gramps was on the weed as a player.
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Allen Barra cites Rob Neyer in this Wall Street Journal piece about the just-retired pitcher. He should have gotten John Feinstein, too, while he was at it.
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BaseballBookReview ran this piece on the Joel S. Franks book.
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From bloggernews.net, this review by Simon Barrett of Dean Whitney’s new novel. Upshot: I really like Dean Whitney’s story telling approach, he has taken a subject that obviously he knows a great deal about and managed to make it appeal to non baseball fans. He takes the time to explain the terminology and strategy of […]
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What took so long? From The New York Times, this review of Back, Back, Back, an off-Broadway play about steroids in baseball. No even a walk-on part for Jose? After all, he was in that reality TV show. Upshot: Mr. [Itamar} Moses’ disappointingly drama-free drama does little more than skim the surface of the protracted […]
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This review on Harvey Frommer’s paean to the House that Ruth Built comes via River Avenue Blues. Upshot: Frommer has crafted a great mix as he honors Yankee Stadium, and presenting a building that has stood the test of New York time for so many decades is no easy task.
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This one on John Feinstein’s most recent baseball title comes from the DailySkew Baseball blog. Upshot: Overall, a good modern baseball book about how cerebral the game of pitching is, and how pitchers work out in-between starts. Also, an inside look into the Mets 2007 collapse (so you can read about Willie Randolph, Jose Reyes, […]
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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
* Playing catch up, part 1
December 6, 2008
Been a bit remiss in recent weeks, so trying to catch up with a roundup of items: BaseballFarming.com offers a list of “Baseball Books to Love,” which includes fiction and non-fiction titles. Prior to 2008, baseball didn’t have to sully itself with official instant replay, but since it did, might as well bone up on […]
Tagged as: baseball books
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