Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
From Forbes: “Vintage Baseball Volumes To Bring High Prices At Rare Books Fair.” From Valley News, which covers the Vermont/New Hampshire area: “Baseball odyssey: Book recounts summer of epic road trip.” From the Culpeper, VA Star Exponent: “Pete Hill: Black Baseball’s First Superstar features Culpeper Hall of Fame slugger In Publisher’s Weekly, author David Kelly […]
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Was listening to Extra Hot Great, one of my favorite podcasts ever, and heard a mention of this under “Winners of the Week”: “Lou Gehrig Series From Lorne Michaels in the Works at Apple” From the Hollywood Reporter article: “The iPhone maker/streamer is teaming with Universal Television and Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video to adapt author […]
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January 3? Already? Where did the year go? From RoyalsReview.com, this list of “15 books for baseball fans—and some for other sports fans, too.” (Note: not necessarily new releases.) Peter Dreier, co-author of Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America and Major League Rebels: Baseball […]
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And maybe it should have stayed buried. In looking up For Love of the Game on IMDB, I found yet another baseball film in which Kevin Costner appeared of which I was totally unaware: Chasing Dreams, a 1989 release that garnered just a 3.2 rating on that site. After viewing the trailer, I understood why […]
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It might be a perfect storm: Ron Shelton, former minor league hopeful and writer/director for perhaps one of the greatest baseball movies of all time in Bull Durham; Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter of all time; and Richard Ben Cramer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author of What Do You Think of Ted Williams […]
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If this is on the level, I’m in, since my surgery recovery incarceration puts me in a great position to put the time to good use. Shane Co., a jewelry company, has announced a promotion in which some lucky cinephile will get $1,000 for “binge watching” 10 baseball movies, according to this piece from CNBC.com’s […]
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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes. In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast […]
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Reading Ron Shelton’s wonderful book, The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit — which I reviewed for an upcoming post on Bookreporter.com — I was interested in seeing the trailer again. I wondered if it was “true to the final product.” Many […]
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Meant to post this a while back. The actor famed for, among other roles, his rendition of Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams died last week at the age of 67. There have been complaints about the casting of and portrayal by Liotta as the shamed Black Sox outfielder. For one thing, there was […]
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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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Getting closer (hopefully) to pitchers and catchers reporting but there’s still time to catch a good baseball movie. Or a bad one, depending on your point of view. The folks at MLB’s website are offering their choices on various themes. In this entry, they seek to answer the question, “Which baseball film has the best […]
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when articles like appear: Which baseball movie has the greatest Hollywood ending? Where to begin? How about the choice of three films for this panel discussion between Ian Browne, Anthony Castrovince, Alyson Footer (who served as the piece’s writer and moderator), Adam McCalvy, and Manny Randhawa. In what appears to be a series of such […]
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The character actor who played Chick Gandil in the classic baseball flick Field of Dreams died Nov. 17 at the age of 78 after a long battle with Parkinson’s. Gandil — a notorious member of the Black Sox — was not the only baseball figure LaFleur portrayed: he also appeared as Babe Ruth in The Sandlot. […]
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I was looking for a baseball movie to watch the other day and came across It Happened in Flatbush, (1942) which I confused with one of my favorites, It Happens Every Spring (1947). Amazingly, I had never seen Flatbush before so I gave it a shot, especially since it featured Lloyd Nolan, one of my […]
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Don’t bother looking for him on Baseball-Reference; instead, check him out on IMDB. David Lander was probably — unfortunately — best know as part of the moronic duo of Lenny and Squiggy (his character) on the inexplicably popular I Love Lucy knockoff, Laverne and Shirley (all due respect, of course). But his baseball connection was his […]
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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 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
