Hank Greenberg baseball cards sell really fast. Too fast, considering many are small and gray and printed on cheap cardboard from 80 years ago. The cards range in price from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars, depending on rarity and condition. Because of Greenberg’s Jewish background and his skill, the cards are of…
Ever wonder what Detroit Tigers’ slugger Hank Greenberg really had to say about anti-Semitism? Or how Congresswoman Bella Abzug felt about sexual discrimination? From the late 1960s to 1990, some 2,000 people were interviewed for the American Jewish Committee’s William E. Wiener Oral History Library. Recorded on audiocassette, these interviews comprised more than 6,000 hours…
This year’s Major League Baseball All Stars game had two arguably Jewish players on the roster (out of 78 players total): second-baseman Jason Kipnis of Cleveland (American League) and first-baseman Paul Goldschmidt of Arizona (National League). Both have Jewish fathers and Christian mothers (same as the two arguably Jewish players on last year’s All Star…
In October 2012, Gerald Eskenazi wrote an article in this newspaper on the evolving image of the Jewish athlete. The article quoted the mother of major league pitcher Jason Marquis, who had once called the editor of the Jewish Sports Review to ask: “My son’s Jewish. How come he’s not in your publication?” By last…
Anyone seeing “42” would be horrified at the hostility Jackie Robinson faced from his teammates and opposing players and catcalling from the stands when he integrated Major League Baseball. What the film did not depict was the reported encounter Robinson had with the one baseball player who could best understand the prejudice the Civil Rights…
In 1938, with 58 home runs for the Tigers, Hank Greenberg’s mother made him a promise. “There’s a rumor that if Hank had hit 60 home runs, which would either tie or beat Babe Ruth’s record, my mother-in-law would do whatever one does with gefilte fish. Cook it, bake it, stuff it,” Marilyn Greenberg, Hank’s…
● Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes By John Rosengren New American Library, 400 pages, $26.95 On October 6, 1965, Sandy Koufax sat out the first game of the World Series in observance of Yom Kippur. By putting the holiest day of his faith before the most important event of the most popular sport in…
Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame Edited by Franklin Foer and Marc Tracy Twelve, 304 pages, $26.99 As long as people are reading the Bible, Jews will always be thought of as a stubborn people. You can thank God for that: In Deuteronomy 9:6, God tells Moses that the Israelites are “stiff-necked.” As long…
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