Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
♦ The Washington Post published this piece on Tony La Russa’s memoir, One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season. ♦ Better late than never: It seems the Seattle Post-Intelligencer finally got around to posting a review of Zack Hample’s 2007 publication, Watching Baseball Smarter: […]
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I don’t know about you, but being the curmudgeon that I am, I have trouble with the folks who jump on the baseball bandwagon once the regular season is over. This ain’t the NBA or NHL, bud, where everyone gets into the playoffs so you don’t have to pay attention until there are just a […]
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♦ The Huffington Post offers this piece on the best baseball (and non-baseball) DVDs. ♦ Net54baseball.com is a collectors site that has lots of baseball books for sale, trade, or just admiration. You have to register but it’s free. It’s worth it just for the pleasure of viewing book art like these. ♦ Redbirdsrants.com, a […]
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♦ Baseball de World ran this review of Mike Shropshire’s Seasons in Hell. Upshot: “Overall, the story was a pleasure to read.” ♦ Here’s another review of the new Clint Eastwood project, Trouble with the Curve (“Predictable”). And one from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (“a by-the-book romantic comedy that has the usual ingredients.”) ♦ A mini-review […]
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The Hardball Times posted this review by David Wade of Yankee Miracles: Life with the Boss and the Bronx Bombers, by former sports executive Ray Negron. Bill Jordan of Baseball Reflections followed in kind.
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Recently finished reading my second baseball novel (!) in the last month; The Greatest Show on Dirt by James Bailey was the first. I’ll be doing reviews of both of them in the near future as my 501 schedule permits. I wanted to contact Joseph Schuster but could find no info either on Facebook nor his […]
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But will it work for Gil Hodges? In 2010, Danny Peary and Tom Clavin collaborated on Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero. In conversations, Peary made no bones about his desire to see Maris inducted into the Hall of Fame. Is this becoming a cause celebre for the writing team? Their newest project is Gil Hodges: […]
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♦ From the Tulsa World, this on on Robert Fitts’ Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan. Upshot: “It is very well-researched and a balanced account, but it occasionally threatens to sag under the weight of such details. Readers need not be fans of baseball to appreciate the sport […]
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♦ The Summer 2012 issue of Jewish Currents features a review by Cynthia Werthamer of Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League, by former IBL hurler Aaron Pribble. Upshot: “While Pribble’s book could do with less foreshadowing…, his retelling of the ups and downs […]
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♦ Bleacher Report posted this one about Golden Boys: Baseball Portraits, 1946-1960 by the late Andy Jurinko. Upshot: “Seldom does a book come around that can boast about being magnificently illustrated as well as historically captivating, let alone a book based on the Golden Age of baseball.” ♦ SouthBendTribune.com posted this review of Andre Dawson’s […]
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* Baseball Prospectus is adding a mid-season “addenda” to its annual publication: The Call Up 2012. Here are a couple of review, the first from SouthsideShowdown, the second from ValueOverReplacementGrit. My question is: why is a book like this necessary? Those interested in such information would probably find it easier to get the most recent […]
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Interesting premise. Just one of several though-provokers in Bad Sports, by Dave Zirin. Not exactly sure why a review of a two-year old book was posted on the Los Angeles Review of Books site at this time (other than the fact that it was recently released as a paperback), but here it is. And while […]
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* The New York Times published this review about Ballplayer: Pelotero, a film documentary about baseball in the Dominican Republic. Upshot: “Forget feel-good boys-of-summer tales. This film shows a shady business in which scouts and the teams they represent try to manipulate teenage players, and to some extent the players do some manipulating of their […]
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* The Capital Times (Madison, WI) published reviews on Daniel Levitt’s The Battle that Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy and John Klima’s Bushville Wins!: The Wild Saga of the 1957 Milwaukee Braves and the Screwballs, Sluggers, and Beer Swiggers Who Canned the New York Yankees and Changed Baseball. Upshot, former […]
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Borrowing a bit from the flash mob phenomenon, here is a collection pf review on Bruce Spitzer’s historical fiction about a “reanimated” Ted Williams. The books were offered gratis in exchange for the readers’ comments. The views expressed here are solely theirs; I have not edited any of the contributions, save for the Bookshelf style. […]
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♦ James Bailey posted this review of Baseball Prospectus’ Extra Innings: More Baseball Between the Numbers from the Team at Baseball Prospectus. Upshot: “Overall, this is a satisfying and thought-stoking release, with much of it coming from a different angle than you might be accustomed to given the heavy dependence in most sabermetric resources on […]
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♦ Baseball Prospectus chose an odd assortment for this list of “10 Favorite Baseball Books”‘ which I suppose could be considered min-reviews. ♦ The Boston Globe published this review of They Call Me Oil Can: Baseball, Drugs, and Life on the Edge, by Oil Can Boyd with Mike Shalin. As regular readers of the Bookshelf […]
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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
At the risk of offending some of you…
September 25, 2012 · 3 comments
In my regular search for items for the blog, I cam across a couple of review for baseball fiction that caught my eye (ouch) and made me stop. A bit of background first. A couple of weeks ago The New York Times ran a front-page review of Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon’s latest novel in the […]
Tagged as: Art of Fielding, baseball fiction, John Grisham, Michael Chabon, The Brothers K
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