Maybe good with the head, but not in sports. And if that sport is baseball, one of the national glories, that’s a problem. But luckily some champions arrived there too, in the nine shots called innings which in Italy arouse mild emotions, if not to a small circle of fans, but which from Washington to Texas, from the West Coast to the Bible Belt, are an indispensable element of identity. Well, yes, even the Jews know how to play. They are “ours”.
Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, a documentary film from 2010, tells this story very well. Also thanks to the high-level interpreters who worked on it: the Pulitzer Prize winner Ira Berkow who oversaw the screenplay, the multiple Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman as narrator. A suggestive reconnaissance, even in the stories evoked. Barney Pelty, known as the “Yiddish Curver”; Samuel Ralph Nahem, for all “Subway Sam”; and again Mose Hirsch Solomon, who had the honorary title of “Rabbi of Swat”. Grainy faces in vintage photos from the early twentieth century. Names and human events that will say very little here, but which in the USA belong to the category of myth. Today a symbol, but then forced to deal with contexts that are not always the most encouraging. Just mention Henry Ford, among others. The famous captain of industry also known for his anti-Semitism according to which all the evils of baseball had a root problem: “Too many Jews”. Several of which also occult, skilled in dissimulating “through the change of name”.
This long and however complex “American love story”, which has one of the most representative figures in the legendary pitcher Sandy Koufax, is now living a new chapter. For the first time since its foundation, back in 1903, the Major League could have an Orthodox Jew among its protagonists. Indeed, even two. This is the 17-year-old Jacob Steinmetz, a native of New York and a Long Island resident, just selected by the Arizona Diamondbacks. And Elie Kligman, who is 18 and a native of Las Vegas, chosen instead by the Washington Nationals. We are still at the draft level. But the big leap seems possible.
The debate immediately opened, even in the American Jewish press: how will the two young athletes – respectful of Shabbat and the rules of Halakhah – be able to reconcile their full way of experiencing Judaism with a sporting activity that requires availability and energy 24 hours a day ?
Kligman would have already set the record straight: he does not play Shabbat and solemn party. “Those days belong to God,” he told the New York Times in an interview. While Steinmetz would have given his availability, as long as he reached the game location before sunset and to move between the hotel and the stadium exclusively on foot. A hypothesis that for Kligman’s father does not exist: “For six days a week my son gives his all to be a baseball player. If there are no changes in the Major League, we will go as far as possible ”. Therefore, obviously, not beyond the limits imposed by observance. 
Journalist and blogger Ron Kaplan, in an interesting article on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, explains how eleven players who identify as Jews took to the field in the last tournament (a total of over 300 in the entire history of the league). But none of them consider themselves “observant” in the traditional sense. With Steinmetz and Kligman we would therefore enter new, unexplored terrain. With a little good will on the part of the teams, however, a compromise would be possible. “The way of playing has changed. You are not on the court every day, ”writes Kaplan.
An Orthodox Jew in the Major League would be an absolute novelty. But what has yet to happen in reality has already happened in fiction. As in the novel The Season of Pepsi Meyers by Abie Rotenberg, released in 2015, which features a young orthodox talent who arrives at the court, even, of the New York Yankees.
Without forgetting that some of America’s greatest Jewish writers have baseball stories among their masterpieces. How The best, by Bernard Malamud, released in 1952. O The great American novel, one of Philip Roth’s most corrosive works, published in 1973.
The latter will recount: “Baseball has a grip on fans for two main elements. Like many other sports, it has great elegance and there is individual heroism. As an American child you are mesmerized by both of them. As a kid, you play baseball all summer, all day, until evening, as long as there is enough light to see the ball. Then, as an adult, you watch it and follow it for the rest of your life. Still as if I were a child ”.
After all, the exact same thing that happens in Italy with football.
Adam Smulevich twitter @asmulevichmoked
(In the images, top to bottom: a postcard autographed by Sandy Koufax, one of the greatest pitchers in history; the “Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story” poster; rising star Elie Kligman; the other great promise Jacob Steinmetz; the cover of Philip Roth’s Great American Novel)
(July 16, 2021)
