Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
The long-time movie critic succumbed to cancer yesterday at the age of 70. He was given a “melancholy happy trails” tribute on Pardon the Interruption, in which co-host Tony Kornheiser noted that his show copied liberally from the dynamic Ebert and his co-host, Gene Siskel, employed in their TV show, At The Movies. As would […]
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Billy Sample, who enjoyed a nine-year career, primarily with the Texas Rangers, has turned to “act two” of his life, literally. Sample served as executive producer, co-director, and writer of Reunion 108, a feature film about to make its official release. From the IMDB plot summary: Two generations of professional baseball players return for a […]
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I bring this up because I was reminded of one of my all-time favorite actor’s baseball-related oeuvres by Jonathan Coe’s new pictorial biography, Jimmy Stewart: A Wonderful Life. Stewart’s career is often discussed in two broad periods: pre-World War II, when he generally played lighter, more genial roles, and following the war (in which he […]
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Hit the mother lode on Kirkus today in a good-news/bad-news scenario. On the plus side, I found several reviews of forthcoming topics for your interest and information. On the down side, 501 isn’t among them. 🙠Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes, by John Rosengrean (buy it here). Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing […]
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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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The inspiration for the character of Dottie Henson in A League of Their Own, died on Saturday at the age of 88. Davis published her memoir, Dirt in the Skirt, (which weighs in at over 500 pages) in 2009. There was also a website in her name. I just visited the spot and there’s some music […]
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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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The cover of Penny Marshall’s memoir, My Mother Was Nuts, depicts her in catcher’s gear. Why, isn’t exactly clear. There’s no doubt Marshall, who I first saw playing Oscar Madison’s secretary Myrna in The Odd Couple, is an accomplished person, a leader in her industry, both in general terms and in the advancement of women […]
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I don’t believe this for a minute, but it’s kind of funny. “He plays on a softball league at the Vatican” ??? Get him on The Yankles! Hey, if Ghandi could play, why not the Pope?
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Dec. 22 marked the 70 anniversary of an advertisement than ran in The New York Times and several other newspapers calling on men and women of German ancestry to join in a campaign denouncing the Nazi regime. The advertisement, which was sponsored by the World Jewish Congress, began At this season in which we celebrate […]
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I don’t often buy Entertainment Weekly. I usually permit myself an issue or two a year, including the “Best and Worst of” issues. Trouble With the Curve, which seemed to go from screen to DVD with amazing speed, was deemed #5 on the list of the worst movies of 2012. According to Lisa Schwarzbaum, We’ve […]
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Several months ago I posted this about 42, the forthcoming biopic about Jackie Robinson. As we get closer to the scheduled April 12 release date expect to see more stories, like this one from SB Nation’s Beyond the Box Score and this from Baseball Musings. In the trailer, we see Christopher Meloni doing a pretty […]
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EW.com includes Chadwick Boseman, star of 42, the upcoming biopic about Jackie Robinson as one of the “13 to Watch in 2013.” From the item: Why He’ll Be Big: Not only does Boseman hold his own next to Harrison Ford in the Jackie Robinson biopic 42 (out April 12), he also has the acting chops […]
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A few months ago Bob Costas and Jerry Seinfeld sat down to deconstruct the famous Abbot and Costello routine, Who”s on First. Jimmy Fallon recently took it a step further in this bit feature Seinfeld, Billy Crystal and a couple of other guys regular viewers of the show probably recognize. Of course this one, by […]
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This goes back aways, but David Roth wrote about R.A. Dickey, mold-breaker for the concept of the cliched athlete, in the July 9 issue of New Yorker. More recently, Will Leitch offers these thoughts about the Mets in a “reasons to love New York” retrospective. Bruce Markusen at The Hardball Times posted this piece about […]
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♦ Here’s an oldie but a goodie via eBay: a copy of H. Allen Smith’s classic Rhubarb, about a cat who inherits a baseball team. ♦ The novel was turned into a 1951 feature film starring Ray Milland (who was also the lead in the 1949 baseball comedy It Happens Every Spring), Jan Stirling, Gene […]
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Let’s have a series about fictional players. And who better to compile them then Gary Cieradkowski whose latest features Henry “Author” Wiggen, the hero of such Mark Harris classics as Bang the Drum Slowly, The Southpaw, A Ticket for a Seamstitch, and It Looked Like For Ever. Here’s a roster of “The 25 Greatest Fictional […]
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For you movie buffs out there, from TheChive.com from a piece about The Shawshank Redemption: Andy and Red’s opening chat in the prison yard, in which Red is pitching a baseball, took 9 hours to shoot. Morgan Freeman pitched that baseball for the entire 9 hours without a single word of complaint. He showed up […]
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Look, there are only so many flicks that could possibly fall into this category, so it’s just a matter of how they’re ranked. This list comes from The Hollywood Reporter, so they should know. No real surprises here. Damn Yankees leads off, followed by Bang The Drum Slowly, The (original) Bad News Bears, The Natural, […]
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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
The reviews are in for 42
April 12, 2013
All right, let’s get this out of the way. I haven’t seen the movie yet, and will be writing my own review, but I think I’ve heard enough and read enough to spout off. Since this is a biopic “based on a true story,” I had no qualms about listening to Slate’s Spoiler Special for […]
Tagged as: 42, Jackie Robinson
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