Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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Continuing on the cinematic theme… The next sub-genre is “best baseball movies based on a true story.” And the entries are A League of Their Own (1992) 42 (2013) The Rookie (2002) Eight Men Out (1988) Note that in general, you won’t find anything older than the 1970s, so in this instance there’s no The […]
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The veteran actor, perhaps best known for his role as Martin Crane, the father on Fraiser, died on Feb. 4 at the age of 78. Mahoney was one of those character actors you always recognize but rarely remember the name. To me, his greatest turn as as Chicago White Sox manager Kid Gleason in the […]
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The New York Times obituary says the late actor was best known for his role as a southern sheriff in a couple of James Bond movies. Not for me. For me, Clifton was best known for his role as the penurious Charles A. Comiskey, owner of the Chicago White Sox, in Eight Men Out (which […]
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There’s a link in Graham Womack’s piece on The Sporting News site that will take you to a similar ranking of “the best baseball movies of all time.” I wouldn’t have raised a peep if they substituted “favorite” for “best,” but you know how I feel about superlatives; I’m not going to let this go […]
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Not the Ken Berry of F Troop fame, but Ken Berry the outfielder for the White Sox, Angels, Brewers, and Indians, who turns 70 today. The defensive standout (two Gold Gloves) served as a technical adviser for the movie version of Eight Men Out and even had a speaking part. He’s the loudmouth in the […]
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Hall of Famer Eddie Collins was born this date in 1887. Eddie Collins: A Baseball Biography The feature film Eight Men Out featured Bill Irwin in the Collins role. I remember thinking how wonderful a job he did, both as an actor and an athlete, for someone I had heretofore recognized only as a mime/clown. […]
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See how well you can do on this Mental Floss quiz about the 1988 film version of Eliot Asinof’s classic about the 1919 Black Sox. I had a perfect score; I’m just sayin’.
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The eulogies keep pouring in about this marvelous writer and raconteur. This one, from Maggie Hendricks of NBC Chicago, specifically speaks to Terkel as a baseball fan. This one from NPR.org isn’t baseball-centric, but he deserves the recognition.
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Andrea Weaver hosts a tribute site for David Strathairn, the actor who portrayed the knuckle-balling White Sox pitcher in Eight Men Out. She devotes an entire page to his accomplishments as an actor and surprisingly convincing athlete. Factoid: Strathairn’s sone, Tery, played the role of Bucky, one of the little kids who idolized the Sox […]
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From the on-line edition of the East Brunswick Home News Tribune: “Eight Men Out” is a book by Eliot Asinof about the eight members of the Chicago White Sox kicked out of baseball for their role in throwing the 1919 World Series. This week there are eight men wondering if they will be the next […]
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The director of Eight Men Out compares the Black Sox scandal of 1919 with the steroids scandal of “aught-eight” in this interview with the Village Voice. I particularly enjoyed the interchanges between Sayles, as sportswriter Ring Lardner, and Studs Terkel, as Hugh Fullerton, as they put their heads together to bring the whole sordid affair […]
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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
