Jerry Weinstein
He Led Israel’s Baseball Team To Unforgettable Upset Victories
March Madness, the NCAA college basketball tournament, is known for heroic underdogs pulling off shocking upsets. But for Jewish fans of the national pastime, the World Baseball Classic this past March featured madness on a whole new level, thanks to the exploits of Team Israel and its manager, Jerry Weinstein.
Weinstein, a 73-year-old baseball lifer who also manages the Double-A Hartford Yard Goats, ran a team almost solely comprising American Jewish minor leaguers. Acknowledging that baseball is not exactly Israel’s most popular sport, he told reporters, “I think that by playing in this [tournament] and doing well that we enlighten people’s awareness.”
Israel, ranked 41st in the world, pulled off a string of victories against some of the best teams on earth, including South Korea, Chinese Taipei and Cuba.
“It feels like the World Series, but only bigger,” Weinstein said.
Although their Cinderella run came to an end with a loss to Japan, Weinstein and the Team Israel athletes not only impressed scouts looking for call-ups, but also strengthened their Jewish identities.
“It’s so special for all the players,” pitcher Shlomo Lipetz told ABC News. “They feel this kind of connection being Jewish, this connection of playing for Israel.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
