Author Bio & Stories

Tom Keiser

Tom Keiser has contributed to Network Awesome, The Good Men Project, The Awl and Fruitless Pursuits.  He lives in southern New Jersey with his family and knowledge of sports trivia, and lives on Twitter @keisertroll.

  • May 15, 2013
    Sportsflicks: The Greatest Hockey Movie John Wayne Ever Made

    A young John Wayne. A chicken farm in peril. A hockey team that's sort of like the New York Rangers, and John Wayne playing hockey for that team to save his chicken farm. It's 1937, and it's about as weird as it sounds.

  • April 30, 2013
    Sportsflicks: Mysteries of The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh

    The NBA was a strange place in the late 1970s, if probably not quite as strange as the version depicted in 1979's gloriously batshit Jonathan Winters/Julius Erving vehicle The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh. Few things, really, could be much stranger.

  • April 3, 2013
    Mennonite At Work: Erik Kratz, Catcher, Actor, Turkey Bacon Pitchman — The Clog

    Erik Kratz of the Phillies is a pretty good backup catcher, but his real strengths lie in his ability to effectively pitch turkey bacon opposite a cartoon turkey in local TV ads.

  • April 2, 2013
    Sportsflicks: The Great Alan Thicke/Werner Herzog Ski Movie Double Bill

    In which Alan Thicke and Werner Herzog, two of the great film artists of their generation, tackle the filmic possiblilities of skiing. Not in the same film, sadly.

  • March 26, 2013
    Yakkin' About Florida Gulf Coast University: The Movie — The Clog

    The very term "Cinderella Team" is a reminder of the cinematic aspect that's inherent to NCAA Tournament upstarts. But in the case of Florida Gulf Coast University, an epic upstart with a beachfront location, casting the movie adaptation is almost too easy. The hard part is traveling back in time to 1985 to make it.

  • March 25, 2013
    Sportsflicks: The Kadeem Team, or The 6th Man

    In the long list of films about college basketball, only one dares to cast Kadeem Hardison as a ghostly version of J.R. Rider, and it happens to be the only one that understands how wise it is to cast David Paymer as a hard-driving basketball coach. The 6th Man is that film.

  • March 5, 2013
    Sportsflicks: The Comrades of Summer, or Tales of the Cold War WBC

    Before the World Baseball Classic, slightly after the actual fall of the Soviet Union, and definitely on inexpensive Canadian locations, one baseball movie dared to ask: could David Mamet's favorite actor coach a ragtag bunch of Soviet athletes to semi-competence?

  • February 28, 2013
    Sportsflicks: Bon Cop Bad Cop, or Call the Hockey Cops

    Finally, buddy-cop movie that's secretly a long satirical skit about the NHL, in which a mismatched pair of francophone and anglophone Canadian cops team up to solve a murder and realize, in the process, that they both really hate Gary Bettman.

  • February 22, 2013
    Sportsflicks: Are You There, God? It's Me, Reggie White.

    Reggie White only got one chance to make an uplifting, evangelical-flavored film about believing in yourself (and God). Thankfully, it features Pat Morita, Brett Favre, MC Hammer and wrestling's The Big Show. Surprisingly, it's kind of... good?

  • January 30, 2013
    Sportsflicks: Second String, or The Bills Win The Super Bowl

    It may be some time before the Buffalo Bills play in another Super Bowl. Luckily, there's Second String, the movie in which a tiny Canadian quarterback with a big heart leads the Bills to an unexpected win. Also, Jon Voight wears a hat and looks angry.