Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
As in Extra Hot Great, one of my favorite podcasts. While listening to EHG on my way to work this morning, I learned that Sarah D. Bunting (Bunting!), one of the regular hosts, was absent because she was delivering a paper at baseball conference. I did a quick search and deduced it was this one: […]
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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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Trying to clear out my mailbox o’ links by the end of the year. USA Today had high praise for The Kid, allowing that “chances are, no “Teddy Ballgame” biography will ever match up with Ben Bradlee Jr.’s new and exhaustive book about baseball’s greatest hitter.” (Here’s a 10-year-old’s take on the book. He must […]
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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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I love baseball. I love the movies. So the combination of the two is like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: the best of both world. So I was really looking forward to the first episode of MSG’s The Lineup: Best Sports Movies, an eight-part series which debuted with a discussion of baseball features. I was […]
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Cautiously optimistic about the release of 42 this week. As reported in the Arts & Leisure section of last Sunday’s Times, it’s difficult to boil down the meaning of such an iconic figure in a 128-minute film. As such films are wont, it is “based on a true story.” The list of ballplayers and other […]
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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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The best way to play catch-up is via a “Bits and Pieces” entry so here goes: James Bailey offers this appreciation for W.P. Kinsella’s The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Rob Neyer, Grant Brisbee, and Murray Chass on Mike Piazza and his new book, Long Shot. Don’t know where this excellent Simpsons/Moneyball mashup came from, but Brisbee […]
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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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Every Christmas you can count on a couple of celebrities to cast off this mortal coil. This time, sadly, it’s two of my favorite actors, Jack Klugman obit by Bruce Weber) and Charles Durning. One of Klugman’s signature roles was, of course, the sloppy sportswriter Oscar Madison in beloved TV series The Odd Couple, for […]
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Rob Edelman, author of Great Baseball Films: From Right Off the Bat to a League of Their Own, recently published this article, focusing (heh) on movies that featured some aspects of the New York Mets.
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One of the things I’ve come across during my research is that so many readers and writers take this stuff so seriously. As Crash Davis said in Bull Durham, “This game is fun, okay?” But who says you can both have fun and pay proper respect to those who have made the national pastime so enjoyable? […]
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The documentary about a young man trying to donate sports equipment to Cuba — the country that gave his grandfather’s family refuge during the Holocaust — made its Kickstarter goal of$40,000 in time.
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This isn’t exactly a companion piece to R.A. Dickey’s new book, but Knuckleball!, a 90-minute documentary, is an entry at the Tribecca Film Festival. There’s a free screening tomorrow (April 21) with additional screenings on April 22, 27, and 28. From the official TBB website: “A classic sports story from its glorious highs to its […]
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Well, perhaps not the real Sportsphone, which was popular back in the 1980s. For the price of a call, you could hear updated recorded messages about what was going on on the diamond, the court, the field, etc. And to be technical about it, the How to Do Everything podcast isn’t technically NPR. However it […]
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The nominations for the Academy Awards were announced this morning and Moneyball came away with a “cycle” of sorts. The unlikely cinematic version of Michael Lewis’ best-seller is up for Best Picture, Best Actor (Brad Pitt), Best Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, and Stan Chervin). UPDATE: Moneyball also […]
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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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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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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
Bits and pieces
August 30, 2012
Time for the occasional declutter of the accumulated links and stories, so here goes. “Dan Barry’s Bottom of the 33rd has won the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, which honors a nonfiction book on the subject of sports.” More here. From the Yogi Berra Museum: Former Yankee star second baseman Bobby Richardson, a cornerstone […]
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