Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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Is it just me, or does the premise for this new novel sound familiar? From the publisher’s website: Suicide Squeeze follows super fan, Jamie Mudd, through an unusual Seattle baseball season where he begins to believe that his entries on a scorecard can influence action on the field (my emphasis added). While grappling with the […]
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From Weaver’s Tantrum, a blog that concentrates on the Baltimore Orioles, this review of Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s classic title.
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To Peter Schilling, Jr. The St. Louis Post Dispatch picked his novel as one of the best books of 2008, to wit: The End of Baseball by Peter Schilling Jr. (Ivan R. Dee, 352 pages, $25). Baseball’s 1944 Brownies live again in this rollicking novel. Owner Bill Veeck shines in fiction, just as he did […]
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From bloggernews.net, this review by Simon Barrett of Dean Whitney’s new novel. Upshot: I really like Dean Whitney’s story telling approach, he has taken a subject that obviously he knows a great deal about and managed to make it appeal to non baseball fans. He takes the time to explain the terminology and strategy of […]
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The Oklahoman’s sports columnist Berry Tramel offers this list of five favorite baseball novels, which does not contain many of the “usual suspects.”
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From the One Minute Book Reviews blog, this mini-rev of a cuh-lassic. Upshot: “…written for adults but likely also to appeal to many teenagers.”
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Form the Schenectady (NY) Daily Gazette, a piece on the poetry/story by Sarah Freligh.
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One of my favorite genres just received a new addition with The Bambino Secret, which deals with the Mighty Babe, among more contemporary issues. Fans of this type of book would do well to revisit the series of Mickey Rawlings books by Troy Soos, set in the early part of the 20th century. Soos’ attention […]
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From Texas Pages, which provides information about writers, books and events in the Lone Star state, the following announcement: * Forced Out, by Stephen Frey (Atria, $24.95). Follows a baseball scout, player and mafia hitman as their destinies converge.
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From the New Haven Review, this lengthy critique by Peter Ephross of this overlooked classic by Eliot Asinof.
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From The Baseball Toaster
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by Frank Nappi. St. Martin’s Press I don’t ordinarily read baseball fiction aimed at the young adult demographic. Most are simply rehashes of the same story: young athlete, usually a star, faces adversity in the form of another player on his own team or a health crises or another at-home situation; learns valuable lessons, yada-yada-yada; […]
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City Pages, a Minneapolis/St. Paul based organization, ran this review of Peter Schilling Jr’s. new novel concerning the integration of baseball and Bill Veeck. Upshot: Skillfully drawn with all his flair (and all his faults), Schilling does a near-masterful job of constructing Veeck….And for what Schilling lacks at moments in his spare descriptions of zeitgeist […]
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I’m surprised Peter Golenbock’s ribald tale of Mickey Mantle hasn’t hit the remaindered bin yet. Lasorda’s I Live for This got the treatment just a few months after it published. Anyway, here an excerpt from the audio book as read by Alan Smithee. http://audible.edgeboss.net/download/audible/content/bk/pnix/000053/bk_pnix_000053_sample.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
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From the Columbus Dispatch, this review of the new young adult fiction on love, loss, and baseball. Upshot: [Author Jennifer E. Smith] might be a rookie, but she hits a home run with a poignant and touching novel about hope, perseverance and the strength of the human spirit.
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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
* Life imitates art
June 20, 2008
In the current issue of ESPN The Magazine, Rick Reilly writes about a high school pitcher who deliberately threw at a home plate umpire, instructing his catcher to let the ball go on through. You can read that piece here. The scenario is eerily reminiscent of a scene from Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel […]
Tagged as: baseball fiction, Philip Roth, Rick Reilly, The Great American Novel
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