Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
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As you may have notice, these entries have been falling off in the last several weeks. My apologies. A new full-time job — very different from what I had been doing as the sports and features editor of a weekly community newspaper in suburban New Jersey — has put new and strange demands on my […]
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As you may have notice, these entries have been falling off in the last several weeks. My apologies. A new full-time job — very different from what I had been doing as the sports and features editor of a weekly community newspaper in suburban New jersey — has put new and strange demands on my […]
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Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of Lou Gehrig’s death. I’m guessing that has something to do with the addition of Lou Gehrig: Pride of the Yankees by the legendary Paul Gallico to the Amazon baseball best-selling list (as a Kindle book). Naturally more recent books on Gehrig have enjoyed the ability of temporal distance as […]
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Funny how discoveries are made. My wife and I were having lunch at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, last fall and dropped by the gift shop on the way out. Now usually, I hover around the door, tapping my foot impatiently and watching my watch. But right at the front of the shop […]
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The National Pastime Museum website offers a collection of essays on My Favorite Baseball Books. The list includes many of the best-known titles as assessed by writers, critics, and other baseball savants. Among them: Bang the Drum Slowly, by Joe Schuster, author of The Might Have Been: A Novel The Natural, by Ryan Swanson, author […]
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More or less. One of my appointment podcasts is Extra Hot Great, a smart, funny, and occasionally vulgar program on pop culture. One of my appointment TV shows is Jeopardy. Last night, Mark Blankenship, one of the regular panelists on EHG, was a contestant on Jeopardy. It’s like getting peanut butter on your chocolate. Blankenship […]
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Maybe I should make it “2L2W,” along the lines of W2W4 (what to watch for, for the uncool out there). After reading his spot-on critique of the Sunday ESPN Game of the Week between the Mets and Nationals in today’s New York Times, I exchanged a few emails with sports media columnist Richard Sandomir. During […]
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Happy to hear the news that Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, by Jonathan Eig, will be turned into a feature movie. From the New York Post of July 17: George Steinbrenner’s grandson, Robert Molloy, will be part of a program Friday on the grounds of the former Yankee Stadium. Molloy is […]
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Two gentlemen with some interesting attachments to baseball. Hermann, one of my favorite actors, passed away Wednesday at the age of 71. Frankly, I thought he was older. He played Lou Gehrig to Blythe Danner in the 1978 TV movie, A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story. I haven’t seen this one in […]
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Once in a while it’s good to remember that the Baseball Bookshelf is not just about books, but about movies, magazines, collectibles, and illustrations, all of which can also find a spot there on. So here’s baseball artist Graig Kreindler, whom I first “met” seven years ago when I did a profile on him for […]
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I don’t need an excuse to visit the Yogi Berra Museum. For one thing, it’s almost a Roberto Clemente throw from my house. For another, they always have great events with interesting guests. (The only problem is parking. Hey, Dave Kaplan, work on that, okay?) Last night the Museum hosted an opening reception for “The […]
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Recall if you will the scene in The Pride of the Yankees in which Lou Gehrig follows Babe Ruth’s promise to hit a home run in the World Series for “sick Little Billy” with two blasts of his own. Fast forward to earlier this week and the Chicago Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo. (If the video below […]
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Over the past several days I’ve posted twice about Lou Gehrig, including his role inn the B-western film Rawhide. So what was in yesterday’s NY Times? When the Iron Horse (Almost) Played Tarzan
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In advance of my Bookshelf Conversation with Jonathan Eig which I will post tomorrow, here’s a blast from the past. Climax! was one of those live-performance anthology television series in the 1950s sponsored by a major corporation, in this case Chrysler. This 1956 episode, The Lou Gehrig Story, starred Wendell Corey as Gehrig, character actor […]
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Last week I posted this entry on Tom Shieber’s frame-by-frame analysis to say “yea” or “nay” (sort of) to the urban legend that Gary Cooper’s baseball action while portraying Lou Gehrig was inverted since the actor was a natural righty (I wonder: there’s a scene where Gehrig is signing a ball for sick little Billy […]
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Ron reading about baseball. Ron loves movies. Therefore, Ron loves reading about baseball movies. So you know where I stand on this fascinating piece — “The Pride of the Yankees Seeknay,” published by Tom Shieber, senior curator of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, on his Baseball Researcher blog. You can watch the whole […]
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provided it was wide enough and you have about a half mil to spare. Interesting back story to it, as well, regarding actor Kurt Russel and his extended family, including former Major Leaguer Matt Franco.
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As per this story in The New York Times. One recent discovery, from a cellar in Illinois, might be unlike any other, showing Ruth in his prime and shot from close range, sitting atop a pony while wearing a child’s cowboy hat and muttering into a home movie camera, as a boyish Lou Gehrig, who […]
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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
The Bookshelf Conversation: Jonathan Eig
April 21, 2014
Lou Gehrig. Jackie Robinson. Two of the game’s most iconic players, celebrated for their courage under extreme conditions. Both the subjects of outstanding biographies by Jonathan Eig, and both of which appear in 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die Eig has worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Chicago magazine, […]
Tagged as: ALS, Jackie Robinson, Jonathan Eig, Lou Gehrig
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