Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
“ESPN Breaks Up Sunday Night Baseball Team Of Jon Miller And Joe Morgan” I know a lot of people had problems Morgan, citing his monotonous prattle and over-analysis, but frankly, I don’t care who the announcers are. In fact, call me perverse, but I find the more they annoy, the more enjoyable the game. In […]
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The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Nov. 5 at Noon. Title Rank General The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy 1 Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton and Tim Keown 2 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, […]
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That was quick, and perhaps for the best. “If it were done, when ’tis done, then twere well it were done quickly.”
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The former Dodger and Reds pitcher and Giants, Braves, and Yankees manager (62 games in 1982), died today at the age of 86. He published his memoirs — A King’s Legacy: The Clyde King Story — in 1999. This, strangely, is one of my favorite cards of King, taken back in the day when Topps […]
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From ESPN.com: Former Detroit Tigers and Cincinnati Reds manager Sparky Anderson has been placed in hospice care at his Thousands Oaks, Calif., home for complications resulting from dementia. Anderson, 76, was one of the first baseball personalities I ever interviewed. It occurred shortly after his book They Call Me Sparky came out in the late […]
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If you thought it was worth that much. “Sammy Sosa bat doesn’t sell” Speaking of bats, they’re still the comic book weapon of choice.
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Nuns selling rare Honus Wagner card [T]he Baltimore-based School Sisters of Notre Dame… are auctioning off the card, which despite its poor condition is expected to fetch between $150,000 and $200,000. The proceeds will go to their ministries in 35 countries around the world.
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I was shocked this morning to hear the news of the passing of Bill Shannon, the long-time and popular official scorer and baseball historian, who died yesterday in a house fire in West Caldwell, a few miles over from my residence in Jersey. Shannon, 69, lived with his 92-year-old mother, who, fortunately, was rescued from […]
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One of these days, some enterprising person is going to go back to all those historic baseball games and write about the secondary events that helped pave the way for a Kirk Gibson, a Joe Carter, or a Bill Mazeroski to become part of the lore of the national pastime. But don’t forget the Hal […]
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The cover of this week’s issue, which features Minnesota Twins’ power-hitter Jim Thome, struck me as eerily reminiscent of a long-ago photo: Well, maybe not so much, but pretty close. Anyway, Thome gets the main feature, written by Joe Posnanski. JoPos also writes about Derek Jeter’s upcoming free agency, but surprisingly, there’s no mention of […]
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Now that Derek Jeter’s behavior has been the subject of several ethical ramblings — including Bruce Weber, author of As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires — the gloves are off (and the caps are on). Without their beloved captain and role model towing the line, the rules of propriety […]
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This from SI.com: “Strasburg has ‘significant tear’; Tommy John surgery likely.” Seems I’ve seen this movie before.
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(Because you can put either a small TV or an American flag on your bookshelf.)
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You know the Mets are out of it when The New York Times no longer prints detailed Stories about the games, even the victories. Friday’s paper carried just nine paragraphs about the previous night’s 3-2 loss to the Astros. Saturday’s edition (at least the one we received by delivery): seven following the Amazins’ 7-2 break-out […]
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Joshua Prager “broke” the story that the Giants used an elaborate system of electronic buzzers to pass along stolen signals from the outfield, which he incorporated into his book, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World in The Wall Street Journal, so I thought […]
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The man who hit “the shot heard ’round the world” died yesterday at the age of 86. Here’s the Richard Goldstein obituary in The New York Times. There have been several books about Thomson’s heroics. His home run is a staple of baseball lore in both fact and fictional versions. The Giants Win the Pennant! […]
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(Because the new records books will carry this development.) Read a fascinating item just now: Seems that in the pre-Internet/computer days of record keeping, someone made a mistake in 1961 and credited Roger Maris with one extra run batted in than he deserved, according to this piece by Greg Couch on MLB.Fanhouse.com; other media outlets […]
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This from the Associated Press: Dorothy Seymour Mills has been added by Oxford University Press as co-author of an acclaimed three-volume history of baseball originally attributed solely to her husband. Harold Seymour was long credited as author of Baseball: The Early Years, Baseball: The Golden Age, and Baseball: The People’s Game. The books were published […]
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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
Because you could put this on your bookshelf…if your name was Steinbrenner
September 23, 2010
They probably have humongous bookshelves in their palatial estates. Wouldn’t you know, the Steinbrenners can never do anything simple. The latest deal: is the monument honoring the late King George too big? Many fans have a problem with tributes to players like Mantle and DiMaggio This big while the new one saluting GS monument is […]
Tagged as: George Steinbrenner, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Monument Park, Yankee Stadium
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