Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will recognize the twin traditions of baseball and film when, for the ninth consecutive year, it hosts the Baseball Film Festival in Cooperstown, Sept. 19-21. Filmmakers can submit their work to be considered for the Festival through Friday, Sept. 5. Films can be of any length and […]
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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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Can you believe it’s been almost 30 years since the NY Mets won their last championship? That’s a generation. Not that I’m complaining. Could be worse (see, Chicago Cubs). But anniversaries are great for books and movies, so Heather Quinlan is taking up the challenge for ’86 Mets: The Movie. As you can tell from […]
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Don’t forget, this week’s Conversation features Dwier Brown, who portrayed Ray Kinsella’s “ghost-player” father, John, in Field of Dreams. Wanted to give this plenty of time to circulate for Father’s Day. His indigog campaign is no longer active — he made more than the goal — but I still think this video is worth watching. […]
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The excellent Joe Posnanski writes about Field of Dreams, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. As such, the 1989 film, which was nominated for three Oscars and won several “best foreign language film” from international organizations, will no doubt he the subject of similar pieces, some which will heap praise, others derision. The next […]
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Jon Hamm of Mad Men fame plays the lead role of JB Bernstein in the new baseball film Million Dollar Arm (although I notice on the IMDB page that the character’s last name isn’t included. Hmmm). MDA is based on the true story of a contest whereby two young athletes from India try to get […]
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Politics aside, I’ve often wondering why such smart people such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, Thomas Oliphant, and George Will (among others), have such an affinity for baseball. here, Will — author of A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred — tries to explain why the game is such a […]
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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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Accusations of cheating on the diamond. The New York Yankees’ starting pitcher Michael Pineda garnered a lot of attention when he was accused of adding a foreign substance to the ball in a 4-1 win over the Boston Red Sox on April 10. This just happened to come right around the time I watched the […]
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Apropos of earlier entries about the 25th anniversary of Major League and a suggested new line of bio-pics, here’s a list from SI.com’s Extras Mustard of “11 Sports Movie Characters Who Would Suck at Their Sport in Real Life.” Two of the 11 come from baseball flics, including Henry Rowengartner in Rookie of the Year Ignoring the fact […]
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For some reason, it seems a lot longer than 25 years since Major League hits the screen. Must be the clothes. To be honest, this was never one of my favorites. I found the characters a bit too cartoonish, especially coming after the more realistic Bull Durham. Although the phrase “Juuuust a bit outside” — […]
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Just discovered that my podcast last week with Jon Paley, co-director of Ballplayer: Pelotero‘ was damaged. Fixed now and also available on iTunes. Sorry for the inconvenience. Carry on.
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I originally posted this on my blog about Jews and sports since Youkilis is one of the handful of Jewish players, but there’s enough book/movie/collectibles that I can kill two birds with one stone, so… * * * Thanks to Robert Whiting, I have been able to find a way to keep tabs on Kevin […]
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42, the Jackie Robinson bio pic, wasn’t nominated for any Academy Awards this year. Too bad. Not that it was a great film by any means, but still. Baseball. We’ve been talking abut baseball predictions lately, but John Axford had a fantastic run of his own when he batted 1.000 in his Oscar picks. Next […]
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With Kevin Youkilis trading places with new Yankees acquisition Masahiro Tanaka of the Rakuten Golden Eagles in Japan, I was curious as to how he would adjust to the new culture. Sometimes it work, as in the case of Warren Cromartie; sometimes it doesn’t, as was the case for Jake Elliot (although he did, finally, […]
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From today’s New York Times: “Fit for a Film: Suit Filed Against Warner Bros. in Screenplay Theft.” The screenplay in this case being Trouble with the Curve. I saw that movie. Just sayin.’
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Long-time Mets broadcaster Howie Rose put in appearance on The Brian Lehrer Show earlier this month to discuss (ostensibly) his memoir, Put It In the Book!: A Half-Century of Mets Mania. You can listen to it here. * * * Baseball once again was a topic, albeit a brief one, on my favorite NPR show, […]
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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
