Is it just me, or does that seem like a redundancy? Anyway three all-time favorites are on this list posted to Hoopla.com. And sorry, but as the years go on, I wonder if Ball Four will, in fact, lose its edge.
Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf
Our motto: “If it can fit on a bookshelf, it fits here.”
Ron Kaplan by Arnold Roth
In my "day job," I'm the features and sports editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper. I'm also the editor of the Bibliography Committee Newsletter for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
I did a piece on the award-winning cartoonist and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
What I’m reading
What I'm reading now:
Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between
What I just read:
Paul McCarthey: A Life:, by Peter Ames Carlin
Grade: B. Pleasant enough; no sensational material. McCartney could be a right bastard at times, but aren't we all?
What's next:
L'Époque Glorieuse des Expos, by Alain Usereau
Book contributions
My article on the later biographies of Babe Ruth appears in
My article on the Mets' 1969 post-season appears in
Statistical Theory
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I don’t think “Ball Four” will lose its edge. My son, a 17-year-old high school pitcher, is reading “Ball Four” now, after me prompting him several time over the past couple years. He is getting it, understanding that baseball at a competitive level is cut-throat, but nothing beats the time in the dugout. Enjoy the game — now.
The era of Bouton’s book is as”relevant” now as reading about Babe Ruth’s era was to Bouton’s generation. So much has changed in America (and the world) that his anecdotes now seem like charming anachronisms, like seeing pictures of a family from the 1940s gathered together around the radio.
That’s not to say that Ball Four is not a classic, just in a different place than it was when it first came out.