Mets’ Grass Gets Green-er

By Forward Staff August 23, 2006

Together with shofar blasts, the hora and a Yiddish rendition of “America the Beautiful,” Jewish Heritage Day at Queens’s Shea Stadium last year also offered a nail biter of a baseball game. In the fifth inning, with the hometown Mets down 7-0, rookie Mike Jacobs — in his first major league at bat — hit a three-run homer. The heavily Jewish crowd went berserk. A Jewish savior on Jewish Heritage Day!

The Cinderella story had just one small flaw: Jacobs isn’t Jewish.

But you can’t accuse the Mets of not learning from their mistakes. On August 22, just five days before this year’s Jewish Heritage Day, the team acquired Arizona Diamondbacks slugger Shawn Green, a bona fide Jew who even has been known to sit out games on Yom Kippur.

The Mets ended up losing last year’s game 7-4. We’ll see how they fare this time around.

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