Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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It’s widely agreed that baseball movies as a rule don’t do well either at the box office or with critics. Sure there are exceptions — Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and the original Bad News Bears immediately come to mind. But by and large, meh. Case in point: I recently watched a MLB Network presentation […]
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NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
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XX Because this is an ongoing concern and I can’t be bothered to remember how many of these I’ve done before. You know how many baseball “experts” picked a World Series in which the Boston Red Sox faced the St. Louis Cardinals? According to PunditTracker, zero. Where do I apply for a job in the […]
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In The Baseball Uncyclopedia: A Highly Opinionated, Myth-Busting Guide to the Great American Game, authors Michael Kun and Howard Bloom write about the state of baseball literature.According to their calculations, there are: Books about the Yankees. Books about the Red Sox. Books about the Yankees and the Redd Sox. Books about players who played for […]
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Forgot to post this amusing standoff between Joe Kelly of the St. Louis Cardinals and Scott Van Slyke of the Los Angeles Dodgers prior to the final game of the NLCS (love the frustrated umpire towards the end of the clip). Enjoy.
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One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed being a member of the Society for American Baseball Research is the cool publications that come with the territory. Well, they’ve only gotten better in recent years. In addition to annual Baseball Research Journal and The National Pastime, SABR has taken to paying tribute to some great ball clubs […]
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If you thought it was a stretch to make a feature film out of Michael Lewis’ non-fiction baseball classic Moneyball, what say you about Buzz Bissinger’s Three Nights in August, which considers a 2003 series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs? According to this piece on variety.com, Billy Bob Thornton will play the […]
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♦ The London Free Press (Ontario) published this piece on Calico Joe. Upshot: Calico Joe has home run power. The baseball portions, particularly the first 100 pages or so, are more delicious than a Fenway frank. But Grisham saves his heaviest hitting in the 198-page Calico Joe for the second half, where push comes to […]
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Just a thought. I’m listening to the audio version of George Vecsey’s Stan Musial: An American Life, narrated by Scott Brick. It brought something to mind. As every American — baseball fan or not — may know, Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play in the major Leagues (at least in the […]
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They were associated with other teams as well, but their primary fame came with St. Louis. Bob Gibson turns turns 76(!), while The White Rat, aka Whitey Herzog, is 80. Both are enshrined in Cooperstown. Well done, gentlemen. Stranger to the Game: The Autobiography of Bob Gibson Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame […]
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As I continue to do research for my own project, I get a kick when I find some old material that confirms I’m on the right track with some of my selections. Hey, it’s nice to find validation rom time to time, right? So today’s blast from the past is this brief appearance by the […]
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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 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
Author interview: Will Leitch
July 3, 2010
Big League Stew, a Yahoo sports blog, conducted this audio interview with the author of Are We Winning? Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball.
Tagged as: essays, St. Louis Cardinals, Will Leitch
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