Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t particularly care for Stephen King’s novella, Blockade Billy. I found his co-authored Faithful with Stewart O’Nan much more in my alley. In this Bangor Daily News piece, he discusses his affinity for the game, among other items. Haruki Murakami, author of such best-sellers as 1Q84, also loves […]
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More articles have come out lately in praise of Roger Angell, who received the Spink Award for baseball writing last weekend at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Tom Verducci, senior baseball writer for Sports Illustrated had this to say. Is Verducci the “heir apparent” for Angell? Remember, Angell has been writing about the game since […]
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“They come and they go…. I’ll be around here longer than you or anybody else here. I’m here to protect this game. I do it by making or breaking the likes of you. And after today whether you’re a goat or a hero, you’re gonna make me a great story.” Max Mercy, in The Natural […]
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If you’ve been a reader of this blog for awhile you know I’m all about the process. I love back-story and deconstruction. I want to know, like any reader, how authors come up with ideas, who their inspirations were. So it was with a sense of serendipity that I came across this yesterday at my […]
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One of my favorite movie quotes comes from Men in Black when Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) is trying to convince police officer Edwards (Will Smith) to join the elite extraterrestrial monitoring organization: Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth […]
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Here’s something you don’t see every day. I’m guessing you could count on one hand the number of times Women’s Wear Daily has run feature pieces on baseball (items referring to baseball caps as accessories do not count). But here’s a major profile on the venerated writer Roger Angell. Didn’t realize he was a fashion […]
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The author of one of the most controversial baseball biographies died yesterday at the age of 62. Cramer published Joe DiMaggio : The Hero’s Life in 2000. Many fans of the Yankee Clipper were outraged as the author painted the legend in an unusually unflattering light. DiMaggio was cheap, ungracious, a womanizer (sometimes bordering on […]
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The award-winning sportswriter for The New York Times, will discuss the sports culture and his career experiences — which actually began with an eventful meeting with Mickey Mantle —- followed by a signing of his memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter, at the Yogi Berra Museum tomorrow (July 16) at 5:30. Books available for purchase at the […]
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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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The pioneering African-American writer/broadcaster was a favorite around our household in the days of a kinder, gentler sports-talk radio format. Rust, who also appeared on WNBC-TV news programs, died Jan. 12 at the age of 82. From the New York Times‘ obituary by Richard Goldstein: In his 1976 book “Get That Nigger Off the Field!,” […]
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I was flattered to be the subject of this interview with Favorite PASTimes, a blog dedicated to historical fiction. Interesting to be on the opposite side of things.
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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
Roger Kahn for the Hall of Fame?
July 25, 2014
The author of this Huffington Post piece makes a compelling argument. Most latter-day fans of Kahn know him from his nostalgic look at The Boys of Summer, which — hard to believe — was published more than 40 years ago. But he was also a beat writer for those Brooklyn Dodgers, as well as a […]
Tagged as: Baseball Hall of Fame, Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Dodgers, Jackie Robinson, Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer
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