Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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The Brooklyn Dodger pitcher who famously lost a ground ball in the sun during the 1952 World Series died on July 15 at the age of 80. His obituary, written by Richard Goldstein, appeared in yesterday’s New York Times. Like many of his teammates, enjoyed a renewed popularity through books such as Roger Kahn’s The […]
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The crime novelist, perhaps best known for his “Spenser” series, passed away at the age of 77. As much as I enjoyed the TV version, starring Robert Urich and Avery Brooks, the novels were all pretty much the same. Parker branched out in later years. He wrote a few mysteries with a female protagonist as […]
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Several new titles consider World Series past. Two — by Joe Posnanski and Mark Frost — deal with the 1975 Red Sox-Reds contest, which was highlighted by Carlton Fisk’s game-winner in the sixth game, the closest to that point Boston had come to winning a title since 1918. The next most recent is Perfect, by […]
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From journalists/sports guy Paul Oberjuerger, this considered assessment of the new Walter O’Malley/Brooklyn Dodgers book by Michael D’Antonio. Upshot: What makes this book important? The author had access to “tens of thousands of items” from the O’Malley family archive. And, naturally, that O’Malley-centric material tends to paint Walter O’Malley in a kinder light. If only […]
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The Providence Journal posted this review of yet another account of the Dodgers’ (and Giants’) move to California. Upshot: To the dwindling circle of Brooklyn Dodger fans, Walter O’Malley will forever remain a despised #@%&*. If they can bring themselves to read it, Murphy’s book will reinforce their notion.
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Jonathan Eig, author of Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinon’s First Season and Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, does the honors for Michael Shapiro’s new book on the exit of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the ultimate entrance of the New York Mets.
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The Sons of Steve Garvey Blog posted this review of Steve Traver’s new book, one of his many projects this year. Upshot: …Dodger fans might already be quite familiar with most of the tales Travers recounts, and he often doesn’t go into the depth necessary to capture the drama of a moment or emotion of […]
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Would it seem silly to you to devote an entire book that showed a particular baseball was not the one hit by Bobby Thomson in the 1951 playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. That how I felt when I read this piece in The New Daily News on Miracle Ball: My Search for the Shot […]
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No one can nurse a grudge like a Brooklyn guy can nurse a grudge. Take, for example, this article on Michael D’Antonio’s “apology” for Walter O’Malley. D’Antonio’s biography was the result of that ultimate Faustian bargain: in exchange for giving the elder O’Malley a fair shake, the family gave the author access to thousands of […]
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A revised version of Henry D. Fetter’s unpublished paper that received a 2007 McFarland-SABR Research Award was recently published under the title “Revising the Revisionists: Walter O’Malley, Robert Moses and the End of the Brooklyn Dodgers” in the journal New York History (Vol. 89, no. 1, Winter 2008).
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How did the Brooklyn Dodgers get their name? According to a recent edition of NPR’s Studio 360, you can thank Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, who were battling it out to see whose system of electricity would prevail. Mike Daisey narrated a segment on “Tesla vs. Edison”: There was a trolley running in Brooklyn on […]
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Oh “great”; here we go again. Although the author doesn’t employ “greatest” or “best” in his title, The Last Great Pennant Race does have connotations that there haven’t been any since. I’m guessing thousands, if not millions, of fans would beg to differ.
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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
* Bits and Pieces
June 17, 2009
Time to play a little catch-up: From Pressboxonline.com, a Baltimore-sports oriented site, a review of Bert Randolph Sugar’s new coffee table book about the Hall of Fame. “[The author] left nothing out and I can’t think of a better way to educate those whom are grasping for a better understanding of baseball’s history than to […]
Tagged as: Alex Rodriguez, baseball books, Baseball Hall of Fame, Brooklyn Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, Curt Smith, Michael Shapiro, Roger Clemens, steroids, Vin Scully
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