Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Now that Moneyball is out on DVD/Blue-Ray/etc., look for a new round of reviews on the film. Here are two to get you started. The first comes from Over The Monster, a Red Sox-centric blog. The second is a “live-blog” post by Rob Neyer at Baseball Nation. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve never […]
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With the Golden Globes just handed out and the Oscars still on the horizon, look for more lists like these. Jeff Euston over at Baseball Prospectus offered his top ten faves, including some unusual titles such as Brewster’s Millions and Rookie of the Year. This prompted movie buff Rob Neyer to submit this one, which […]
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In the spirit of the holiday, I watched a baseball film called Milltown Pride. Produced by Bob Jones University, it is a Christian film with a message that I don’t feel precluded from understanding simply because I am a Jew, so here goes. There are many good points to the movie. The lessons — the […]
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‘Tis the season for the various awards to start announcing their nominees. Surprisingly, Moneyball is up for four Golden Globe Awards, including best drama (!), actor in a movie drama (Brad Pitt), supporting actor in a movie (Jonah Hill), and best screenplay (Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian). Rob Neyer, SB Nation’s baseball editor and a […]
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Okay, this time I mean it. These will be the last links to some interesting pieces about the new film. From Forbes, “Can Brad Pitt Pitch ‘Moneyball’ to Box Office Glory?” From Entertainment Weekly‘s “Inside Movies” column, “‘Moneyball’: How audiences fell back in love with screenwriting.” From Pop Matters, “Moneyball: By The Numbers” From The […]
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As promised, here are the baseball-related items from the current issue, which features the release of Moneyball as its cover story. Austin Murphy on “Brad Pitt Deals“ Tom Verducci on “The Art of Winning An (Even More) Unfair Game“ And a brief history of Sabermetrics Also, Joe Posnanski on uber Cubs fan Steve Hirschtick.
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I’m not going to dwell on this much more. This being the day of the release, the dailies have issued their critiques. The New York Times made it one of their “Critics Picks.” (Here’s a sneak peak of a profile on Billy Beane slated to run in this Sunday’s NYT Magazine. The New York Daily […]
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The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will recognize the twin traditions of baseball and film when, for the sixth consecutive year, it hosts the Baseball Film Festival in Cooperstown, Sept. 30-Oct. 2. Fourteen films, with themes ranging from Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson to the 2003 National League Championship Series, will be screened […]
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Dan Gutman has created a series of pretty good kids’ books with the premise of a boy who can travel back through time to meet some of the greatest players in the game, among them Honus Wagner, Mickey Mantle, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Babe Ruth, among others. Now, I don’t know the whole story here, […]
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Bud Harrelson, the Mets’ shortstop of my youth, turns 66 (!) today. He published How to Play Better Baseball, an instructional, in 1972 and is a staple of any book on Mets’ history. Also born this date, Yankees Hall of Fame catcher Bill Dickey (1907). Amazingly, there is no stand-alone biography on Dickey, although he’s […]
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Time once again for a major links dump to make up for bad behavior. Warning: some of these links go back to March. Just sayin’. * A member of Red Sox Nation pays tribute to a “mortal enemy” by giving the NY Times photo book on Derek Jeter the thumbs up. * The Wall Street […]
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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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I don’t know, what name would you suggest for an award to honor the best baseball performances? At Oscar time, Jim Caple of ESPN’s Page 2 offers his take on “Academy Awards for Baseball Movies” (he dubbed his awards the “Oscar Madisons”). No real surprises here, although I would have selected Costner over Matthau, Davis […]
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And not just because Charlie Sheen is associated with it. Why do the folks in Hollywood think it’s such a great idea to bring back a franchise several years — in some cases decades — later? Case in point: Sheen has expressed interest in revisiting the Major League franchise, resurrecting Rickey “Wild Thing” Vaughn. He […]
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From the Baseball Hall of Fame, this list of programs in the months ahead: A Celebration of Black History Month – Feb. 21-25: The Hall of Fame will host a week’s worth of programs celebrating Black History Month. Programs will feature Artifact Spotlights, films that feature the stories of Negro leagues legends and a walkthrough […]
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By the way, it’s still winter so why aren’t we hearing snow-themed songs anymore? “Winter Wonderland” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” among others, are not “holiday” songs, per se, so they’d still be valid. Just sayin’. Thought I saw my first “annual” at the bookstore last week, but it was a fantasy publication, so it […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In a former life, I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted an award-winning bog about Jews and Sports.
I did a profile piece on the legendary cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was very generous in immortalizing me in this caricature.
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
Who should review?
September 21, 2011
I’ve been in a cave most of the time, so it’s just now dawning on me: When it comes to movies and books like Moneyball and The Art of Fielding (which you just know is going to be turned into a feature film before too long), who should be considered the more credible reviewers? Should […]
Tagged as: Apollo 13, Brad Pitt, Hardball Times, Moneyball
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