Hall of Fame baseball player Hank Greenberg grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium yet never played for his hometown Yankees. Why not? The Yankees did in fact pursue the young prospect. Paul Krichell, the scout famous for discovering Lou Gehrig, recognized another raw talent in Greenberg and figured — as the New York…
(JTA) — When Jews visit the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, they can learn about the two most celebrated members of the tribe who have been inducted into the hallowed museum: Hank “The Hebrew Hammer” Greenberg and Sandy Koufax. Now they’ll have the chance to find out about the dozens of other…
WASHINGTON – Former American International Group Chief Executive Maurice “Hank” Greenberg has donated $10 million to Right to Rise, the Super PAC backing Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the group’s fundraising. The donation makes the Jewish-American businessman one of the largest contributors to…
The Game Must Go On: Hank Greenberg, Pete Gray, and the Great Days of Baseball on the Home Front in WWII By John Klima Thomas Dunne Books, 432 pages, $27.99 On December 5, 1941, Hank Greenberg walked out of Michigan’s Fort Custer Training Center a free man. Seven months earlier, he had become the first…
● Dolph Schayes and the Rise of Professional Basketball By Dolph Grundman Syracuse University Press, 224 pages, $24.95 Basketball player Dolph Schayes should be as famous as baseball slugger Hank Greenberg. Like Greenberg, Schayes was the first Jewish star in his sport. During his playing career, from 1948 to 1964, Schayes was a 12-time All-Star;…
(JTA) — The rarity arose in the initial meeting of first-year Detroit Tigers manager Brad Ausmus and his second baseman Ian Kinsler, newly traded from the Texas Rangers: a Jewish player reporting to a Jewish manager. Ausmus was “raised the same way I was,” Kinsler learned, with one Jewish parent and an upbringing in which…
Jewish museums in the United States often walk a tightrope when planning special exhibitions: Should they focus exclusively on the Jewish experience or study other ethnic communities as well? The former approach risks parochialism, while the latter would make the museum’s focus overly broad. In its new exhibit on Jews and baseball, “Chasing Dreams: Baseball…
Few things warm the heart at the end of a miserable winter quite like the knowledge that baseball season is about to return. While waiting impatiently for opening day, I’d been distracting myself by compiling a list of the 10 greatest Jewish baseball moments of all time; however, I quickly realized that the legendary Sandy…
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