On hallowed ground where Abner Doubleday is said to have dreamed up the sport, a little-known chapter in baseball history was celebrated with a kosher picnic and Hebrew prayer.
Drawn by intertwined passions for sports heroes and all things Jewish, several hundred rabid fans rendezvoused here as the National Baseball Hall of Fame paid tribute this week to Jews who played in the major leagues. At sunset, worshipers chanted the ancient verse, “Shema kolanu — Hear our voice.”
“We felt it was time our people were shown to be part of mainstream America,” said Lenny Winograd, explaining why he and his family felt obliged to drive up from New Jersey.
The occasion for the ceremonies was a set of recently issued baseball cards by the American Jewish Historical Society honoring Jewish major-leaguers (the name as published has been corrected in this text). One side shows a Star of David and a player’s photo; the other bears his career statistics. Eight those so honored, all retired ballplayers, were present for the event. They took part in panel discussions and signed autographs for admirers, some of whom sported skullcaps decorated with baseball’s stitches.
For an outdoor buffet, chicken dinners were prepared by a kosher food purveyor in Albany, N.Y. Carefully sealed to protect its ritual purity, the food was trucked 90 miles to Cooperstown and reheated in the ovens of the First Baptist Church. A kosher bakery in Northern California heard about the event and contributed cookies and other sweets.
Between sessions, former major-leaguer Richie Scheinblum, who played in the 1960s and ’70s, recalled what it was like when the sport was dominated by players from small-town America.
“My first season in the minors, my roommate said: “Would you mind if I touch you?” said Scheinblum, 61. “Then he phoned his parents and said: `They don’t have hair all over their body.’ He’d never seen a Jew before.”
Indeed, Jews have been a rare sight in professional baseball locker rooms, noted Martin Abramowitz, who created the set of cards. By his calculations, only 0.8 percent of major-leaguers have been Jewish, beginning with Jacob Pike, who played in the National League in 1877.
Abramowitz’s deck has 142 cards. Other aficionados think there have been fewer Jewish ballplayers. Some say there have been more, including Cook County Circuit Court Judge Robert Gordon, who dreams of building a Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
“I’ve been compiling a list for years,” Gordon said. “Mine’s bigger.”
Partially, the controversy turns on a methodological issue: How do you measure Jewishness? While the Orthodox trace descent through the maternal line, Abramowitz adopted the Reform approach, crediting a player if one parent was Jewish. But Abramowitz, who works for a Jewish charity in Boston, also insists any player worthy of a card must not have denied his Jewishness.
What about High Holy Days?
For many Jewish baseball fans, the ultimate question is what a player does when baseball’s season overlaps the High Holy Days, noted Aviva Kempner. Her documentary, “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg,” was shown at the Cooperstown celebration. She was inspired to make her film about the Detroit Tigers slugging star by her father’s oft-repeated memory of Greenberg declining to play on Yom Kippur during the 1934 pennant race.
“Growing up, I thought the words `Hank Greenberg’ were part of the Yom Kippur service,” Kempner said.
That mantel of fidelity to the ancestral faith was inherited by Sandy Koufax and Ken Holtzman. “It’s a day you just don’t work,” Holtzman, a former Cubs pitcher, said.. “If I did, what kind of message would that have sent to Jewish kids?”
Some of the ballplayers at the ceremonies recalled their Jewishness as a source of pride not just for themselves, but for teammates. While still in the minors, Mike Epstein, who played in the ’60s and ’70s, hit a home run that soared over an outfield light tower.
“The manager of the other team told me, `Nobody’s going catch that ball, Super Jew,'” Epstein said. “When I came to the ballpark the next day, the title was written all over my locker room stuff. It followed me to the majors.”
Indeed, his card in the Jewish major-leaguers set lists him just that way: “Michael Peter Epstein (SuperJew).”
Ron Blomberg was raised in Atlanta, where sandlot teammates acknowledged his talent by exempting him from ethnic slurs otherwise quick to their lips. Then in 1969, he went to the Yankees — in New York, the epicenter of America’s Jewish world. He was deluged with offers to do product endorsements, including a commercial he made for Cohen Kinishes. A rabid fan who dubbed herself “Bagel Lady” showed up for every home game, bringing him a supply of bagels.
“The funny thing is, she was Italian,” Blomberg said.
Still, being a Jewish ballplayer brought its share of derogatory remarks from grandstands and opposing dugouts — as was noted by a two former ballplayers who, as it were, volunteered for the experience. At one event, the moderator introduced Elliot Maddox by saying: “Elliot, you got some explaining to do.”
Maddox is Afro-American. He recalled never having been comfortable with the Christian faith he was raised in. Playing for the Yankees in 1975, he converted to Judaism.
“I simply gave my religious beliefs a name,” Maddox said.
Time to think
Bob Tufts felt that same impulse while bouncing between the minors and the big leagues as a pitcher in the 1980s. He found himself fascinated by Judaism’s focus on an individual’s responsibility for his or her actions.
“Sitting on a bullpen bench, you have a lot of time to think about things,” said Tufts, 48.
After converting, Tufts married Suzanne Israel. The two had been classmates at Princeton University. They settled in Queens and started going to an Orthodox synagogue — where men and women were separated during services by a mehitzah, a latticework barrier.
“Friends said, `How can you accept sitting in the women’s section?'” Suzanne Tufts recalled. “I told them I’d sat in the players’ wives section at ballparks for years.”
She recalled that teams would seat her and other wives together, just behind home plate. Having grown up in New York, the other women were a largely unknown breed to her: Gentile, often Southern. She was delighted by the constant round of chit-chat — interrupted by brief peeks through the protecting screen, to see what husbands were doing on the field.
A search for roots
In retrospect, Suzanne Tufts realizes how much her husband’s baseball career satisfied her own search for roots, a need to feel part of mainstream America. She can be reunited with those feelings, sitting in the women’s section of a synagogue, peering at the men in their prayer shawls.
“Looking through the latticework, their talises blur, and seem to merge into baseball uniforms,” Suzanne Tufts said. “It’s like I’m back again behind the home-plate screen, with the other players’ wives.”
Blomberg similarly looks back fondly to his years in baseball. When the American League adopted the rule change that exempted pitchers from batting, Blomberg was the first player to come up to the plate as a designated hitter in 1973.
He notes that other records are always being broken. No matter how good you were, someone will come along who can hit a ball better or pitch harder. But his having been the pioneering DH will bring reflected glory to Jewish people forever.
“It’ll be written on my tombstone,” Blomberg said. “He was the first Designated Hebrew.'”
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RICHIE SCHEINBLUM
Born: Nov. 5, 1942
Career stats: Richie was a part-time outfielder from 1965-1974 for six different teams: Cleveland, Washington, Kansas City, Cincinnati, California and St. Louis. He had a career batting average of .263 and hit 13 homers.
MIKE EPSTEIN
Born: April 4, 1943
Career stats: Mike was a first baseman from 1966-1974 with five teams: Baltimore, Washington, Oakland, Texas and California. He had a career batting average of .244, with 130 homers. His nickname: “SuperJew.”
LARRY YELLEN
Born: Jan. 4, 1943
Career stats: Larry pitched in 14 games for the Houston Colts in 1963 and 1964. In 26 innings, he gave up 34 hits and 11 walks and struck out 12. He attended the same high school as Sandy Koufax.
Source: American Jewish Historical Society
