Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
[Note: My spring baseball roundup appears on Bookreporter.com and is reposted here as individual reviews for your convenience.] Former Sports Illustrated executive editor Rob Fleder assembled his own literary All-Star team for Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team. The roster includes such “players” as Roy Blount Jr., […]
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Ben Reiter wrote this piece on the newest hot team in baseball, the Washington Nationals, while Tom Verducci provides this on Phil Humber’s perfect game.
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♦ I don’t usually look at e-books if they haven’t been published on paper as well, but David H. Martinez (The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition: Nearly 700 People, Places, Events, Teams, Stats, and Stories – Everything You Need to Know in One Massive Book) has enough of a track record for me to […]
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The Miami Marlins, apparently. This Forbes piece calls the franchise “The Most Overexposed Team in Sports,” citing recent feature stories in Time magazine, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times, not to mention the Marlins’ gig as the focus of the new season of HBO’s The Franchise. (It was the Time piece […]
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Remember when Piscopo used to channel Frank Sinatra on Saturday Night Live? That’s the first thing that came to mind when I heard “At Fenway,” by Brian Evans. The fact that there’s actually a commercial promoting this is similarly amusing, as is the fact that the counterman has to identify Jim Rice, the former Red […]
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These programs are supposed to take you “deep inside” the organization’s but I watched the Giants version last year. Meh. Kudos to the team for giving such access. The Guillen suspension for his Castro remarks are already there. HBO couldn’t have known ahead of time how that drama would play out. (Although the cynic in […]
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♦ The Washington Times posted this review of Paul Dickson’s new Bill Veeck bio. ♦ Baseball reflections posted this on R.A. Dickey’s Wherever I Wind Up. ♦ Tom Hoffarth’s livre-du-jour is Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team.
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Turning Two: My Journey to the Top of the World and Back with the New York Mets, by Bud Harrelson with Phil Pepe. Thomas Dunne Books, 2012. Harrelson’s new book is a bit a throwback. One could easily imagine reading this in the pre-Ball Four era. Other than a scant mention of disappointment for the […]
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♦ Tom Hoffarth’s latest in his 30 days/30 books series: Dodgers from Coast to Coast: The Official Visual History of the Dodgers. ♦The Los Angeles Times also ran this “straight” review on the Dodgers’ book.
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♦ Tom Hoffarth’s newest installment in his 30 books/30days feature: The Baseball Stadium Insider: A Comprehensive Dissection of All Thirty Ballparks, the Legendary Players and the Memorable Moments, by Matt Lupica. ♦ The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published this piece on Shipwrecked: A People’s History of the Seattle Mariners, by Jon Wells.
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Baseball Reflections posted this review of High Fives, Pennant Drives, and Fernandomania: A Fan’s History of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Glory Years (1977-1981), by Paul Haddad. Just in time for Opening Day in Japan (which just passed. Sorry for the late post): baseball terms in Japanese! Another late post: GQ ran this profile on broadcasting […]
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Several new titles arrived over the past week including: Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs’ Glory Years, 1870-1945, by Randy Roberts and Carson Cunningham A People’s History of Baseball, by Mitchell Nathanson Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, by Paul Dickson (Of The Dickson Baseball Dictionary fame) The Big Show: Charles M. Conlon’s Golden Age Baseball […]
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As a public service reminder, remember to set your clocks ahead one hour before turning in to night. The Mets, and to a lesser extent the Astros, will be falling back as they celebrate their 50th anniversary. David Brooks, the social commentator, published this piece in yesterday’s New York Times on the seemingly impossible tasks […]
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Zack Hample, baseball author and collector extraordinaire, discovered this fun find: an expense sheet for the NY Mets in 1962. The per diem for most of the team seemed to have been $17.15. Today that would be, like, a million dollars.
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From the Feb. 20 New York Times: “The New York Times sportswriter who covered the Mets in 1962, their first season, recalls the cast of characters who gathered in St. Petersburg, Fla., for spring training.” I’m sure many more pieces about the Mets of old will appear during the course of the season. If nothing […]
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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
