Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Suzy Beamer Bohnert, author of a series of sports primers designed for women, is the subject of this interview from The Authors Show, a web-only source, in which she discusses Game-Day Goddess: Learning Baseball’s Lingo. You can listen to it here, but apparently only today (Oct. 15), even though the book was published in 2009. […]
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The New York Times ran this article in the front section about trying to find a way to make maple bats more shatter-resistant. I don’t know what David Wright uses, but in the Wednesday night game, his bat broke against his head on a swing. Yikes. He didn’t even get out of the batter’s box […]
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The inspiration for the character of Dottie Henson in A League of Their Own, died on Saturday at the age of 88. Davis published her memoir, Dirt in the Skirt, (which weighs in at over 500 pages) in 2009. There was also a website in her name. I just visited the spot and there’s some music […]
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The cover of Penny Marshall’s memoir, My Mother Was Nuts, depicts her in catcher’s gear. Why, isn’t exactly clear. There’s no doubt Marshall, who I first saw playing Oscar Madison’s secretary Myrna in The Odd Couple, is an accomplished person, a leader in her industry, both in general terms and in the advancement of women […]
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I found the headline of this article — “Will Expanded Replay Lead to More Women Umpires?” — most intriguing. Aside from the deeper question about the opportunities (or lack thereof) for “women in blue,” as discussed in this article on the Baseball Reflections blog, I have yet to hear why the adoption of technology should […]
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Mike Hargrove turns 61 today. “The Human Rain Delay” spent most of his 12-season career with the Texas Rangers and Cleveland Indians. After he retired as a player, Hargrove managed the Indians for nine seasons, getting them to two World Series (1995, 1997). he also had the helm of the Orioles (2000-03) and Mariners (2005-07), […]
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Former NY Times reporter Claire Smith will be the keynote speaker at the 22nd Annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, which kicks off (pardon the football metaphor) on Wednesday, June 2 and runs til Friday, June 4. Having attended one of these, I can tell you that it’s great fun, despite the scholarly […]
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Baseball Stuff You Never Needed to Know and Can Certainly Live Without, by Robert Schnakenberg. Triumph, 2010. Schnakenberg takes his love for pop culture (anti-culture?) and puts a national pastime spin on it in this little faux-reference volume. The connection between PC and baseball has been handled in more serious veins by Jonathan Fraser Light […]
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And Other Tales from the Edge of Baseball Fandom, by Emma Span (Villard, 2010) As much as I love baseball, there are times when I take a step back and wonder, “What am I doing with this nonsense? Surely, there are better ways to spend my time and energies.” And at the risk of being […]
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Madcap Memoirs of the Early LA Dodgers, by Flo Thomasian Snyder (Desert Publications). This comes via TheCalifornian.com. Upshot: The collection of photos alone is worth the price of admission for this behind-the-scenes look at the L.A. Dodger organization. Fans who bleed Dodger blue will love this book, and even those who follow the San Francisco […]
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The New York Times ran this article today about the increased number of women in administrative positions in baseball. How coincidental, then, to find this entry from the We’ve Got Heart blog, featuring interviews some of these ladies as well as author Jane “Confessions of a She-Fan” Heller and, coming soon. Cait “Crazy ’08” Murhpy.
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The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will recognize the twin traditions of baseball and film when, for the fourth consecutive year, it hosts the Baseball Film Festival in Cooperstown, Oct. 2-4. Thirteen films, with themes ranging from women in baseball to a baseball league in Israel, will be screened as filmmakers compete for […]
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From our friend Greg Spira comes this link to LibraryJournal.com’s annual baseball feature. Among the usual share of biographies and memoirs, histories, and social commentaries are such themes as: Yet another biography about Yogi Berra, this one by homonymic author Allen Barra, and one on Walter O’Malley by Michael D’Antonio Ira Berkow’s bio of Lou […]
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Jane Austen wrote about baseball 40 years before it was ‘invented’ A headline in the London Telegraph. Jane Austen wrote about baseball 40 years before its official invention, according to a new book. But evidence of the game’s British origins was erased from history by the American sports magnate Albert Spalding, according to the book’s […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In my most recent "day job," I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted another blog. Busy, busy, busy.
I did a profile piece on the award-winning cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
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
Bookshelf review: Woman Characters in Baseball Literature
September 2, 2011
A Critical Study, by Kathleen Sullivan. McFarland, 2005. Novels and feature films tend to find comfort in stock characters. Stories about celebrities in particular focus on two or three types of women. You have your temptress who, for various reasons, wants to keep the protagonist from succeeding at his mission. For baseball materials you have […]
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