Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
That remains to be seen, but Baseball National posted this about one of the few baseball movies that I have missed: the 1953 vehicle Big Leaguer, starring Edward G. Robinson as a former, well, big leaguer. Pro ballplayers Tony Ravish (!), Bob Trocolor, Harv Tomtor (in an uncredited role), and Al “Necessities” Campanis all appeared […]
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Apologies for the lapse in posting. New computers at the office and at home and necessitated some down time. So where were we? The very kind Tom Hoffarth concludes his 30/30 series with my 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. His previous week included: ==Day 29: The Summer of Beer and Whiskey: […]
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At Home Plate posted this review of Tom Dunkel’s Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line. Upshot: “This book is the story of those men and it’s a great story. One worthy of being read over and over by fans who truly love the game and understand what we all lost during […]
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The critics seem to fall into two main camps: movie critics with no special knowledge about baseball, who based their comments solely on the production values and storytelling and those baseball nerds with lots of knowledge about the topic who were mostly interested in the attention to detail, some to a most picayune level. Let’s […]
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Catching up on Tom Hoffarth’s “30/30” feature: Day 12: The Victory Season: The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball’s Golden Age, by Robert Weintraub Day 13: Smoky Joe Wood: The Biography of a Baseball Legend, by Gerald C. Wood Day 14: Keepers Of The Game: When The Baseball Beat was the […]
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Catching up with Tom Hoffarth’s “30/30” series: Day 7: The Baseball Thesaurus, by Jesse Goldberg-Strassler Day 8: Baseball’s New Frontier: A History of Expansion, 1961-1998, by Fran Zimniuch Day 9: 100 Things Angels Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (100 Things…Fans Should Know), by Joe Haakenson Day 10: Who’s on Worst?: The Lousiest […]
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Michigan Live posted this review on John Rosengren’s new biography, Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes. Upshot: “Rosengren…lovingly describes the devotion of American Jews to a man who overcame harassment and flat feet to become not just a baseball star, but an inspiration to his people.” Here’s something you don’t see everyday: a British book […]
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The long-time movie critic succumbed to cancer yesterday at the age of 70. He was given a “melancholy happy trails” tribute on Pardon the Interruption, in which co-host Tony Kornheiser noted that his show copied liberally from the dynamic Ebert and his co-host, Gene Siskel, employed in their TV show, At The Movies. As would […]
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The New York Times runs this review of Mike Piazza’s Long Shot. Given that the book was released almost two months ago and they’re just reviewing it now, I won’t give up the hopes that the Times will do something with 501. The review is more of a “what the book’s about” piece than whether […]
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Time to play catch-up. This is the period when many newspapers run their reviews of baseball titles to coincide with the beginning of the season. A few books are getting a sizable proportion of attention. And if I understand the concept of zero-sum games, that means others which might be just as good but lack […]
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The AZ Snakepit, a Diamondbacks’-centric blog, posted this about John Sexton’s Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game. Upshot: “Overall it’s a fine baseball book that is interesting most because it examines baseball in a manner more critical than most. The average baseball book is no better than a collection of trivia, […]
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Hit the mother lode on Kirkus today in a good-news/bad-news scenario. On the plus side, I found several reviews of forthcoming topics for your interest and information. On the down side, 501 isn’t among them. 🙠Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes, by John Rosengrean (buy it here). Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing […]
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James Bailey posted this one about Mike Piazza’s Long Shot. Upshot: “I was neutral on him when I began and emerged with a somewhat negative impression. That’s probably not what he was looking for. Your mileage will likely vary depending on how closely you followed his career.” Bill Jordan over at Baseball Reflections did this […]
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Won’t you come home, James Bailey? After a considerable absence from the blogosphere, Bailey returns to critique action with reviews on One Patch of Grass (upshot: “The champions and the cellar dwellers all get their due in One Patch of Grass, whether in the longer “innings” chapters or in the dozens of sidebars, charts, and […]
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A review in The New York Times practically guarantees increased sales, so kudos to co-editors Tracy and Foer and all the contributors to this fine collection. Readers of the NJ Jewish News know I also do a weekly Torah haiku. Therefore I have to support my fellow poets. Here’s a haiku look at the players […]
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Used to be you had to wait until at least February for the first whiff of baseball lit to be available. Not any more. The Hardball Times Annual and The Bill James Handbook are already out an about. Herewith a few reviews: The Handbook, by SB Nation, ESPN’s Sweet Spot. HBT: Not so much a […]
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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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♦ One of my neo-favorites books have been the Freaknomics series. Their blog included this item about the eternal question (well, eternal since 1903, with the occasional break), “Does the best team win the World Series?” By teh way, Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner contributed an essay about everybody’s favorite comeback kid, Adam Greenberg, in […]
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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
The reviews are in for 42
April 12, 2013
All right, let’s get this out of the way. I haven’t seen the movie yet, and will be writing my own review, but I think I’ve heard enough and read enough to spout off. Since this is a biopic “based on a true story,” I had no qualms about listening to Slate’s Spoiler Special for […]
Tagged as: 42, Jackie Robinson
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