Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
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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The director of A League of Their Own recently published My Mother Was Nuts. Naturally the cover caught my eye. So now I feel I have to read the damn thing, just to find out why — of all the things she could have worn for the book art, she decided to go with catcher’s […]
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Two classic American pastimes come together Friday, Sept. 28, as the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum presents the Seventh Annual Baseball Film Festival with opening ceremonies in Cooperstown. The festival continues on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 29-30. The first-pitch event will feature a special screening of Knuckleball at 7 p.m. Friday in the […]
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Friday is the traditional movie review day in the press (anyone remember when there were two release days? Movies used to come out on Fridays and Wednesdays). Here’s the NY Times‘ assessment, by A.O. Scott. Upshot: The trouble with baseball movies like “Trouble With the Curve” is that they tempt reviewers to reach for hackneyed […]
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I don’t have high hopes for this one, but is is a baseball movie, so I’m sure I’ll see it (although I never got around to Moneyball while it was in general release). But the reviews for TWTC are starting to come in and they’re mixed. Latinos Post describes it as “Generic Hollywood Fare Trying […]
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The Atlantic posted this slideshow of sports movies with improbable story lines. I know you’re supposed to suspend disbelief at the cinema but even these stretch the limit, several of which have to do with pretending to be a different gender to be allowed to play the sport in question. The baseball films include such […]
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I think I’m fairly up on pop culture, especially TV and movies. so when I saw a commercial for this upcoming Clint Eastwood/Amy Adams/Justin Timberlake baseball movie, I had to scratch my head. How is it I haven’t heard about this one, which is set to open on Sept. 21? Moneyball got lots of buzz […]
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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
