Bill Mardo, Writer Who Pushed Baseball To Integrate, Dies at 88 [NYT]
Related: Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball [Oxford University Press]

• New Anti-Defamation League and Israel Project surveys find robust support among Americans for Israel versus the Palestinians. [JTA]

• Some folks in Midwood, Brooklyn, decided to celebrate the 73rd anniversary of Kristallnacht with some anti-Semitic graffiti. [Gothamist]

• #FF @jackabramoff. [Ben Smith]

• Foreskin Man has a friend, and her name is Vulva Girl. And she has a song. [PR Web]

• Punk-rocker Jello Biafra, who once canceled a show in Israel in the spirit of boycott, reports back from the Holy Land. “My hunch is that most Palestinians are not like this and just want peace. But Hamas is no joke, and suicide bombers and rockets are very very real.” [Alternative Tentacles]

• Tzipi Hotovely, you are the 24th hottest woman in politics. Mazel tov? [Complex]

• There’s a salmonella-related recall of MealMart kosher broiled chicken livers. [AP/WSJ]

• The ADL has condemned a pro-life film that, it argues, equates abortion and the Holocaust. [JTA]

• The Baltimore Orioles’ new general manager is Dan Duquette, a founder of the Israel Baseball League. [JTA/Jewish Journal]

• San Franciscans, head to the Mission to check out this Idelsohn Society-sponsored pop-up Jewish record store. [Boing Boing]

• The great Hamptons eruv battle rages on. [Hampton Bays]

• One of the top female super flyweights in the world is a 33-year-old Jewish Argentinian. [JTA/Jewish Journal]

Happy Veterans Day. Thanks to all who have served.

• The European Union is expanding sanctions against Syria. [WSJ]

• A nice tribute to Herschel Grynszpan, whose assassination of a German official kicked off Kristallnacht 73 years ago yesterday. [Heeb]

• Retired Jewish ballplayers Shawn Green, Brad Ausmus, and Gabe Kapler are all in on the national Israeli baseball team. [ESPN]

• Great article on Kreayshawn. Most people don’t realize Kreayshawn is Jewish! [NYT Magazine]

• Great article on TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington. Most people don’t realize Arrington is Jewish! [Bloomberg Businessweek]

• Great article by Tablet Magazine columnist Shalom Auslander on his obsession with hard-core pornography. I think most people realize that Auslander is Jewish. [GQ/Longform]

Jewish rapper Drake has not cancelled his planned show at Penn State tonight. Tweeted Salon’s Alex Pareene, “This is Drake’s ‘James Brown saves Boston’ moment.” It was nice to laugh a little last night.

Here’s what happened next: Esteban German grounded out to end the inning. Then, David Freese, the first batter for the Cardinals in the bottom of the 11th, took a 3-1 pitch from Mark Lowe over the center field fence for a walk-off home run.

Moral of the story: Never replace a Jew with a German. We’ll see you tonight.

Earlier: Don’t Mess

First, the Brewers. Ryan Braun, the Hebrew Hammer and our main rooting interest, has nothing to be embarrassed about. The Brewers won their first playoff series since 1982, and over this postseason, Braun hit .405 with two home runs and 10 RBI. The Brewers were felled by their bullpen and lack of a credible hitter in the five-spot. It’s an open question whether first baseman Prince Fielder will be back, but Braun is signed through 2020. And he’s the real thing—the “best Jewish slugger since Ken Griffey Juniorblum,” as The Onion explains. Go Milwaukee.

Now, to the World Series: Rangers vs. St. Louis Cardinals, opening tonight in St. Louis. Second baseman Ian Kinsler picked himself up after a mediocre division series and played much better against the Detroit Tigers. In this postseason, he’s gotten on base four in every ten at-bats, stolen a couple bases, and even hit a home run—as much as you can ask from your leadoff man. Texas—which was originally the second Washington Senators team—will be going for its franchise’s first world championship ever (they lost the World Series last year, you may recall). We wish them the very best.

Related: Ryan Braun [The Onion]
Earlier: Playoff Time!

One, of course, is/remains the Brewers, who have split their first two games against the St. Louis Cardinals, their National League Central archrivals (over whom they have home-field advantage). In their seven postseason games so far, I guess you could say Braun’s been playing okay, what with his .500 average, two home runs and eight RBI, and stratospheric 1.528 OPS. Third game of the Midwest Brewfest is tomorrow night in St. Louis, We personally prefer Budweiser to Miller, but are taking Milwaukee.

In the American League, there is a wonderful sort of parity, as the Rays and the New York Yankees, this year’s version of the perennial two teams from the American League East (the Chanel of divisions), both lost their divisional series, leaving us with the AL West champs, the Rangers, versus the AL Central champs, the Detroit Tigers. Indeed, of the final four teams, the one with the highest payroll is the Tigers, whose $105 million figure is good for only tenth-most and is barely half the Yankees’. The Tigers are wonderfully likable, and Lord knows that city could use a break (although they are already getting one in the form of the resurgent, undefeated Lions). And, sure, the Rangers defeated our beloved Rays. But the Rangers also have second baseman Ian Kinsler, who is coming off a career year and batting leadoff. He is slumping a bit; let’s hope he picks up by tonight, when game three moves to Detroit following the Rangers’ first two wins at home, and we become the first Jews to root en masse for Rangers owner Nolan Ryan since he was on the Mets’ rotation in 1971.

Earlier: Playoff Time!

• The Kol Nidre service tonight at Occupy Wall Street will be across Broadway from Zuccotti Park, in an deliberate effort to expand the Occupation. (If you go, try to find me and say hi.) [Forward]

• Why Occupy Wall Street is taken most seriously in the Middle East. [NYT]

• Washington Capitals forward Jeff Halpern will Koufax tonight; Coach Bruce Boudreau won’t. [WP D.C. Sports Bog]

• Nor will the Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun; the Times’ Richard Sandomir explores further. [NYT]

• It’s kind of adorable how our basic Ashkenazic break-fast foods are seen as exotic in Israel. [Ynet]

• It may be a travesty of democracy, but Russia’s Jews are pretty okay with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s imminent return to the presidency. [JTA/Jewish Journal]

• Calvin Trillin has a tale to tell from Toronto’s diamond district. [The New Yorker]

• Left-wing Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk set an important precedent, getting a court to allow him to register his official religious status as “without religion.” [Haaretz]

• Nukes or no nukes, Tablet Magazine contributor Bruce Riedel insists Iran will not surpass Israel’s qualitative military edge. [The Daily Beast]

• Saul Bellow on being “a Jewish writer in America.” [NYRB]

• Columbia Professor Bruce Robbins is making a movie called Some of My Best Friends Are Zionists. [Kickstarter]

• For only the second time ever, centuries-old Bible manuscripts from Damascus were displayed, in Jeruslaem. [AP/WP]

Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? -Isaiah

Arizona Diamondbacks. They have pitcher Jason Marquis, a trade-deadline acquisition from the Washington Nationals who helped them secure the NL West. Sadly, however, Marquis is on the Disabled List and not on the D-Backs’ 25-man playoff roster; and, even more sadly, J.J. Putz is not Jewish.

Boston Red Sox.

Detroit Tigers. Hank Greenberg’s old club!

Milwaukee Brewers. Two words: Ryan Braun. Don’t expect him to sit out Yom Kippur (he played on Erev Rosh Hashanah, going 0-4 and narrowly missing the batting title): he has said he is an unobservant but proud Jew. (There is even a reference to him as “The Hebrew Hammer”—Al Rosen’s old nickname—in Chad Harbach’s stupendous new novel The Art of Fielding.) If his career continues on its current trajectory, he will be one of the great players of his era. Final numbers this year: 33 homers, 111 RBI, .332 average, and league-leading .597 slugging percentage and .994 OPS. In the Brewers’ series against Arizona, he’s gone 6-for-8, with a home run and 3 RBI.

New York Yankees. Have from time to time drawn the occasional Jewish fan.

Philadelphia Phillies. Star Phillies GM Ruben Amaro, Jr., is a CuJew (Cuban, that is). Plus you know they have lots of Jewish fans.

St. Louis Cardinals. Did you know Harold Ramis is from St. Louis? Well, he’s not, he’s from Chicago, but he went to Wash. U., so, um, that’s something.

Tampa Bay Rays. Owner is Stuart Sternberg. Top front-office guys are Matt Silverman and Andrew Friedman. Together, they exemplify the trend of Jews bringing non-sports expertise into the sports world, enabling, for example, the franchise with the league’s second-lowest payroll and competing in its toughest division to win the wild card. What a bargain! Plus, and with the caveat that he hasn’t really done much since April, Super Sam Fuld made the playoff roster.

Texas Rangers. Ian Kinsler! The Rangers’ Jewish second baseman this year became only the third Jew to join the 30-30 Club, for those who hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in the same season (other two: Shawn Green and Ryan Braun, also this year). He’s gone 2-for-8 with 2 RBI in the Rangers’ series against the Rays.

In order to forestall disagreement as long as possible, Tablet will root for one team in each league, and these will be: the Rays and the Brewers. The Rays split their first two games with the Rangers, both in Arlington, Texas; they head home for the next two. The Brewers are the only team with a 2-0 series lead, over the Diamondbacks. Stay tuned!

Earlier: Golden Boy of a Golden Age

Moment runs brief profiles of five of the top players, but we’ve been focusing on one. The Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun, in the fifth year of his career, is a legitimate candidate for the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award*, which would make him only the fifth Jewish MVP ever—after Greenberg, Lou Boudreau, Al Rosen, and Koufax—and the first since 1963. The Brewers currently have the third best record in the majors, and are likely to win their division (though a late-season surge by the St. Louis Cardinals has prevented them from clinching). In the Triple Crown categories, Braun leads the National League in average (.332); is tied for seventh in home runs (31); and is fifth in RBI (101). Best of all, he is number-one in OPS—on-base percentage plus slugging percentage—with a stratospheric .984. Bleacher Report (I know, I know) has him ranked the second-most likely MVP candidate, after the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Justin Upton.

Finally, the playoffs soon arrive. We will get around to endorsing a team when they actually do (although you probably just got a decent hint of whom we’ll be supporting), but already, the indispensable Ron Kaplan has asked the more pressing question: will any players have to Koufax? Rosh Hashanah seems safe. The last games of the regular season are next Wednesday night—after sundown of which, the Jewish New Year begins. Most of these games are during the day. Will Braun sit out the night-time contest against the Pirates, the team’s playoff spot theoretically locked up by then? What about Ian Kinsler, whose Texas Rangers play the California Anaheim Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim? And the two divisional-round games on Friday, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, will likely take place after sundown. But Yom Kippur? As Kaplan notes, if necessary, the fifth game of one of the National League Division series will take place on Kol Nidre; and the first game of the American League Championship Series will be the following day. Millions of Jewish boys and their mothers are watching … .

* I am, incidentally, in the camp of those who believe Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander should win the A.L. MVP, becoming the first pitcher to win either league’s award since 1992. Argue in the comments if you like.

Is This The Golden Age of Jewish Baseball? [Moment]
Preparing for the Yom Kippur Dilemma [Kaplan’s Korner]
Related: Hammer Time [Tablet Magazine]
Earlier: Braun Chases Pennant, Triple Crown

The superb article abounds with the 85-year-old Branca’s jovial personality as well as fascinating tidbits (like that the first home run he ever gave up in the majors was to a Jew, Phil Weintraub). Prager is the author of a book on the home run—yes, it is very much a big enough deal as to warrant its own book—which argues that the Giants would at times unsportingly steal catchers’ signs so that batters would know what type of pitch was coming next.

The Dodgers and the New York (baseball) Giants—bitter crosstown rivals—ended the 1951 season tied for the National League pennant after a tremendous Giants comeback in August and September. On October 3, the teams played a one-game tiebreaker the final game of a three-game tiebreaker series at the Polo Grounds, the Giants’ homefield in Harlem. The Giants entered the bottom of the ninth down 4-1, but Bobby Thomson slugged his three-run homer off Branca (as rookie Willie Mays watched from the on-deck circle) to walk off with the win. The iconic event has been immortalized as the great moment of postwar Americana in the opening section of Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld, among other places, and for many is crystallized by Russ Hodges’ immortal play-by-play: “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” This news about Branca’s heritage does not change the outcome of that pitch, that game, or that season (the Giants in fact lost the World Series to their other inter-borough competitors, the New York Yankees). It does not even change the fact that Branca was and remains a believing Catholic. But it does serve to further confirm Jews’ sneaky centrality to American mass culture and the all-powerful branch of it called sports.

For Branca, an Asterisk of a Different Kind [NYT]

But then there’s another class of player, the what-if-what-if. Caught in limbo, he fails to generate the same mystique: He is too accomplished to mourn yet not accomplished enough to become a legend. So, as the Major League All-Star game unfolds tonight, let us pay our respects to the almost-legendary Indians slugger Al Rosen, a four-time All-Star and the best Jewish ballplayer between Greenberg and Koufax. “If he had a couple of more good years, maybe one more good year, he would have been a candidate for the Hall of Fame,” Ira Berkow, the longtime New York Times sportswriter, told me. “He was one of the premier, if not the premier, third basemen of his time.”

***

Rosen, a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested asthmatic who had been an amateur boxer, made his debut with the Indians in 1947. He made five appearances that year; nine the next; and in 1949 saw action in 23 games. By the time Rosen got the chance to play a full season, in 1950, he was already 26.

Rosen had put his career on hold to serve during World War II, which accounts somewhat for his delay in becoming a regular in the Indians line-up. The primary culprit, though, was the lack of free agency and any real union presence—pied piper Marvin Miller (a Jewish labor lawyer from the Bronx) did not come over from the United Steel Workers of America until 1966 to become director of the MLB Players Association—which enabled franchises to hoard players. The Indians were grooming Rosen as All-Star Ken Keltner’s successor at third base and had little interest in seeing him flourish elsewhere. With no leverage, players like Rosen could do little more than wait their turn.

Reached at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Rosen, now 87, is matter-of-fact about his strange career path. “I was a walk-on when I played in Thomasville, North Carolina, in 1942,” he told me. “I wanted to play baseball, and Thomasville needed a third baseman. I made $75 a month. I was happy, I was young, energetic, I loved every minute of it.”

But at some point, you get antsy. “I think that, given the chance in 1948, I could have played at the major-league level,” Rosen said. “Definitely in 1949.” The numbers back him up. In 1950, with Keltner finally out of the way, Rosen got his first full season in the majors. He hit .287 with 37 home runs and 116 RBIs. Perhaps more important, his OPS—a stat favored by sabermetricians that combines on-base percentage and slugging percentage—was .948, the second-highest of his career.

Once Rosen finally got his chance, he almost immediately established himself as one of the best players in the game. From 1950 to 1955, he made four All-Star Games. In 1950 and 1951, Rosen was very good; in 1952 and 1954, he was fantastic; and in 1953, Rosen was sublime, winning the American League’s Most Valuable Player honors and narrowly missing the Triple Crown—he led in home runs (43) and RBIs (145) and came in second to Micky Vernon in batting average by .001. (He also led the league with a 1.034 OPS—an OPS above 1 being considered spectacular.) But injuries struck in 1955, and after the 1956 season, he retired at 32, right when he should have been at the height of his powers.

How good was Al Rosen? Baseball writer Jonah Keri, author of The Extra 2%, made the case to me with the metric called Wins Above Replacement (WARP), which takes a “replacement-level player”—essentially, some hypothetical player a notch or two below average—and, using both batting and fielding stats, measures how superior the actual player is to this imaginary mediocrity in the number of extra wins the actual player would generate over a full season. “How much better was Al Rosen than a replacement-level player?” Keri asked by way of explanation. “In his MVP season, he was more than nine wins better. If you have an 85-win team and you add Al Rosen, instead you have a 94-win team. So, you’ve gone from a pretty good club to a club that has a chance to win the World Series. He had a couple seven-win seasons, which are also tremendously good, and a few seasons just below that.”

Keri added, “If you are a two-win player, you’re a solid starter; if you’re a four-win player, you’re an All-Star; if you’re a six or seven player, you’re considered for the MVP; if you’re nine or more, you’re getting into some Albert Pujols-type seasons.”

Rosen also, of course, became an icon for the Jewish community, earning the nickname “The Hebrew Hammer” (though he chose to inscribe “Flip” on his bats). He also met with his fair share of anti-Semitic taunts. The newly arrived black baseball players may have made for bigger targets in the early 1950s—Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947—but Jews were by no means off the hook. When it came to voices from the crowd, Rosen never let his anger show. “You’d hear things from the stands after you would make a bad play or struck out,” he told me. “I had the feeling that anybody who felt as badly as I did could say anything they wanted.”

Other players, though, were a different story. Rosen didn’t hesitate to challenge, and fight, opponents who tried to make his ethnicity an issue. “There’s a time that you let it be known that enough is enough,” Rosen tells an interviewer in the 2010 documentary Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story. “You flatten [them].” He offered a more nuanced picture of anti-Semitism in our conversation: “I always felt that it was much better to ignore it until the point came when you really had to speak up, or else your entire reputation would be damaged. Then, I would assert myself.”

***

The Indians won the pennant in 1954, only to lose the World Series to the New York Giants. That was also the year that Rosen’s injury problems began. He hit .300 with 24 home runs and 124 RBIs—strong numbers, but a marked comedown from the previous year’s heights, the result of having missed 17 games. The fans made their displeasure known, and Rosen’s confidence began to suffer. His numbers dipped further. The Indians tried to arrange a deal that would have sent him to the Boston Red Sox; he rejected it. He was then offered a steep pay cut. Rosen, who had worked as a stockbroker during off-seasons, chose to retire. “Every person has their own ego,” he recalled. “I was used to being the best, and when I couldn’t be the best in my own mind, it was time for me to move on because I didn’t want to start moving around from club to club.”

His injuries were far more extensive and overwhelming than people realized at the time. A fractured finger never healed. He got into a car accident the day before spring training began one year. “Things just began to deteriorate physically, and it became a mental thing,” he said. “Instead of being something I looked forward to every day, the game became something I dreaded.” Nor did this “mental thing” start only when his physical prowess began to wane: As early as 1952, a Baseball Digest profile described Rosen’s “exaggerated capacity for worrying over his batting troubles.” In the previous off-season, disappointed with his hitting, he had traveled to South America to clear his head and had given up golf so he could spend even more time on baseball, working out his legs well before that kind of training was the norm.

The comparisons to Greenberg were always obvious. Both men were enormous, muscular, and proud, feared hitters who were good for power and average alike. Both were Jewish ballplayers who made it clear they wouldn’t tolerate anti-Semitism. Rosen had grown up idolizing Greenberg. And, as it happened, Greenberg was a member of the Indians front office, in charge of the club’s minor league operations when Rosen broke in and general manager soon thereafter. With Rosen starring, Greenberg working behind the scenes, and Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau (Jewish on his mother’s side) as player/manager, the Indians probably had as much Jewish cachet as any organization before or since.

So, it’s of special, if morbid, curiosity, to Jewish sports fans that Greenberg played a not-insignificant role in Rosen’s retirement. In 1956, the player Rosen had grown up idolizing gave Rosen a choice between a second pay cut or a trade, neither of which suggested the former superstar had much faith in an Al Rosen comeback.

Rosen told me he prefers not to talk about his relationship with Greenberg. Leaving baseball was not an easy decision, and having Hank Greenberg push him out the door certainly didn’t help matters. “Too much has been written about my relationship with Greenberg, and I prefer not to go there,” he said.

“Was there some jealousy from Hank to Al, with Al being a prominent player with the Jewish community when Hank was now a front office guy?” said Berkow, who interviewed Rosen when putting together Greenberg’s posthumously completed memoir The Story of My Life. “Maybe, but I can’t go into Hank’s head.”

“Hank was a general manager in a time when general managers were tough,” Berkow added. “There wasn’t a lot of sentiment.” If he was looking to trade Rosen, maybe Greenberg pragmatically saw he could get some value for Rosen. “He wasn’t looking at it as a Jew and he wasn’t looking at it as a friend. He was looking at it purely as a baseball man.” In the end, it was the system that cost Rosen a shot at immortality.

Rosen remained in Cleveland until 1973, sitting on the Indians’ board of directors and working with hitters in the spring. In 1978, he returned to baseball as the president of the New York Yankees, caught in the crossfire between George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin. Rosen resigned halfway through his second season and headed back to Las Vegas, bearing a World Series ring for his troubles. There was a front office stint with the Houston Astros from 1980 to 1985 and, from 1985 to 1992, time with the San Francisco Giants that won him Major League Baseball’s 1987 Executive of the Year award. A decade ago, he was briefly a consultant to Steinbrenner.

“I don’t have many contacts in baseball anymore, but I still watch the game with great relish,” Rosen told me. “I think these guys are unbelievable. I watch third basemen make plays, and I say to myself: ‘Rosen, do you think you could make that play?’ I tell you, those guys are terrific.”

• “Now is the time to deal with these issues,” said President Obama at a press conference today about the national debt. “If not now, when?” A Joseph Telushkin fan, this guy! [The Caucus]

• Did Glenn Beck, testifying before the Knesset, make chit-chat with a member of a State Department-ordained terrorist group? Looks that way. [+972]

• Nextbook Press author Jonathan D. Sarna uses the story of Manischewitz, now run by Sephardim, as a microcosm for the increasing diversity of the American Jewish community. [Forward]

• Rep. Anthony Weiner and Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin retreated to Miami to celebrate their anniversary. And why not? [Page Six]

• Mila Kunis is beautiful, Jewish, talented, and also awesome: She is attending a Marine Corps. Ball in North Carolina with a Marine who asked her out from Afghanistan. [CBS News]

Sam Fuld will be doing color commentary on ESPN for tonight’s Home Run Derby. I’ll be watching. And the entire time, I’ll be thinking of this:

• Expect an offensive from the White House, using trusted surrogates in the community, to persuade American Jews that President Obama is staunchly pro-Israel. Which is a sign that they are concerned about recent reports, but also that they think they can put themselves back in a good position with Jewish voters. [The Plum Line]

•From Athens: “Organizers say they see the long arm of Israel behind their improbable woes.” [NYT]

• Jonathan S. Tobin has a good rundown of where most of the likely GOP presidential candidates stand on Israel, concluding that except for Ron Paul, all stand at least a chance of stealing Jewish voters from Obama. [Contentions]

• Oh right, anti-Semitism lives. (Et tu, Switzerland?) [Ynet]

• This Kafka fable is newly translated for reading aloud, and is pretty clearly about the Jews’ Messiah. [NYRB]

• Midway through the season, Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun is a legitimate MVP contender. The rest of baseball’s Jews, not so much (although how about Jason Marquis?). [Kaplan’s Korner]

Second day in a row for Bruce songs, but I mean, what else? Happy Fourth.

Well, Koufax and Yom Kippur and New Jersey Jewish News, oh my! The profile (titled “Promised Land”!) lays it on thick. It is a fun read, though, so have at it.

Meanwhile, in the same article, SI came up with a sketch for the all-time Jewish-American starting lineup:

Rod Carew, 2B, Hall of Famer
Buddy Myer, SS, career .303 hitter
Al Rosen, 3B, had 145 RBIs in ’53
Hank Greenberg, 1B, Hall of Famer
Sid Gordon, RF, 202 career homers
Benny Kauff, LF, lifetime .311 hitter
Elliott Maddox, CF, career .989 fielder
Moe Berg, C, spoke 12 languages, hit in none
Sandy Koufax, P, ranked up there with Moses.

It goes on to note that Gordon could very well be replaced by Green, then at his career’s midpoint; now that Green has retired with 328 home runs and a lifetime .283 average, and set the record for most total bases hit for in a single game, he has sealed that deal. The problem remaining is Carew. He is famously claimed in Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song”: “He converted,” Sandler sings. But Carew did not convert—he married a Jewish woman and raised Jewish kids, but was not himself a Jew. Meaning we need a second bagger! Ian Kinsler, it’s time to step it up.

Baseball Chronicle [NYTBR]
Promised Land [SI]

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Dodgers announced today that it will sponsor the baseball tournament at Israel’s quadrennial Maccabiah Games, also in 2013. “Our sponsorship hugely enhanced the baseball experience at the 18th Maccabiah Games in 2009,” said Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, “and the Dodgers are proud to continue our close association with the Jewish Olympics.” This is funny, because the Dodgers’ finances are so bad—in the wake of McCourt’s hugely ugly divorce from his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Jamie (who is actually the Jewish one)—that Major League Baseball took control of the Dodgers earlier this spring, and it was actually news a few days ago that McCourt made May’s payroll. Maybe this is part of the settlement? Either way, thanks, rich Irish guy!

Israel to Participate in 2013 World Baseball Classic [Bats]
L.A. Dodgers to Sponsor Maccabiah Baseball [JTA]
Earlier: The Legend of Sam Fuld Grows

There is a specific generation of American Jews, mostly men, who came of age alongside Sandy Koufax and ever since have taken tremendous pride in Jewish athletes. They are the reason the phrase “Is Stephen Strasburg Jewish?” was a suggested search term on Google last summer. (He’s not.) They’re the reason a market exists for sets of Jewish baseball cards. Were it not for them, Amar’e Stoudemire probably wouldn’t have tried to claim Jewish roots upon signing with the Knicks.

My father is of this generation. So is Shel Wallman. A retired public school teacher living on the Upper West Side, Wallman is the founder of the Jewish Sports Review, a bi-monthly magazine available only in print and by subscription. The JSR exists to solve a simple problem. “We wanted to know who the Jews were when we watched a game,” says Wallman, 72. “Now we usually do.”

Wallman’s being modest. He always knows.

For the past 14 years, Wallman and his partner, a retired Los Angeles parole officer named Ephraim Moxson, have been poring over rosters, pestering sports information directors, mailing postcards, calling parents—whatever it takes to figure out whether an athlete is Jewish. That shared obsession—together they put in more than 40 hours per week—has led to the definitive source on the matter, an encyclopedic data dump of Jewish athletes and their stats. “We fact-check like mad,” says Moxson, 68. “There’s some satisfaction in being the foremost authority.”

They typical JSR issue is 24 pages and contains very few, if any, traditional articles. The writing is in the style of Peter Gammons’ famous Sunday notes columns for the Boston Globe: a string of short paragraphs and lists, grouped by sport, heavy on statistics and light on transitional sentences. Wallman does most of the writing. When he chooses to editorialize, the tone is almost always that of a booster.

While the highest-profile athletes get top billing, the JSR does not limit itself to covering the pros. The latest issue recapped the 2009-10 NFL season (10 Jews suited up) and announced the annual Jewish Sports Review College Football All-America team (Oberlin sophomore Josh Mandel got the nod at QB). But it also listed 118 softball players preparing for the upcoming collegiate season, all the way down to Division III.

And it carried this scoop, tucked away in the “Sports Shorts” section toward the back and written in typical JSR shorthand:

Over 20 years late on this item but MICHAEL POLLAK, a U of Texas walk-on PKer in 1990, set a school record (since broken) for FGs at 20 and was named All-Southwest Conference (dissolved in 1996), 1st team.

Why include a blurb about a player who hasn’t taken the field in more than two decades? Because not every athlete wears a Star of David on his trunks. And back when Pollak was kicking those field goals in Austin, there may have been someone in the stands, perhaps one of these guys from the Koufax generation, who wondered whether the record-setter was a Jew. That’s the mission of the JSR: to eliminate the wondering wherever, and whenever, it can.

“We both just always wanted to know,” says Moxson. “There’s a sense of pride. You always root for the Jewish guy.”

***

Not since the days of Koufax and Hank Greenberg have things been this good for the Jewish sports fan. Baseball, far and away the JSR’s most popular sport, has entered into something of a golden era. Fifteen Jews took the field for major league clubs last season and three—Kevin Youkilis, Ian Kinsler, and Ryan Braun—are perennial all-stars.

Off the field, Jewish sports fans are catered to like never before. Jewish sports-hero halls of fame have popped up everywhere from Long Island to Michigan to Orange County. Last fall, a documentary called Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story premiered to a packed house in New York’s West Village. And, of course, the requisite slew of blogs and sites—Jews in Sports, Jews in Baseball, On Jews and Sports—provide daily updates on everything from spring training box scores to the potential lockout plans of Omri Casspi, the NBA’s lone Israeli.

So, how are Wallman and Moxson adapting to the competition? By refusing to change a thing.

Unlike just about every print publication in the country, the Jewish Sports Review has no interest in—or anxiety over—its digital future. There will be no JSR iPad app, the editors say. No @jewishsportsreview Twitter handle. The Jewish Sports Review does not want to be your friend on Facebook. Though the magazine has a home page, it carries the following disclaimer: “Note: This website is for information about the Jewish Sports Review. We do not host our issues online. Our website is for promotional purposes only. This is *not* an e-mag.”

“We like to feel the magazine,” says Wallman when asked why he’s avoided publishing a digital version. He’s sitting in his home office; the full JSR archive, 84 issues in all, is stacked in a FedEx envelope near his desk. He seems annoyed by the question.

And maybe that’s fair, considering that the Jewish Sports Review has what many sites don’t: actual money coming in the door.

The JSR costs $36 a year, a price more than 1,000 subscribers are willing to pay. Renewal rates hover around 80 percent, well above industry average. For a two-man operation with little overhead beyond postage, the revenue adds up. So, perhaps it makes sense that they don’t give their content away online. They’ve got a business to protect, right?

“Business?” says Wallman, even more annoyed by this question than the previous one. “There is no business.”

And that’s the rub: Wallman and Moxson say they’ve never pocketed a penny from the Jewish Sports Review. Everything left over after the costs of producing the magazine—they won’t offer specifics, but after 13 years it could potentially be six-figures—is sitting untouched in a bank account.

“We just put the money to the side,” says Moxson, who handles the finances. His idea is to use the cash as a parting gift to subscribers—at some point the magazine will stop asking for renewals and just publish new issues until the money runs out. “That’s my plan,” Moxson says. “But I haven’t told Shel yet.”

***

The evolutionary precursor to the Jewish Sports Review, long since out of print, is a surprisingly thick book called The Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports. Wallman keeps a fraying copy in his office; he grew friendly with the author, Bernard Postal, who published the encyclopedia in 1955. Wallman isn’t sure what method Postal used to identify athletes, but it was an imperfect one—many non-Jews mistakenly appear.

Wallman and Moxson aren’t willing to let that happen with the JSR. Though neither says it outright, they clearly see the magazine as the definitive record—the Library of Congress archives a copy of each issue—and they take that self-assigned responsibility seriously.

Every athlete who appears in the JSR must be confirmed as a Jew, no assumptions allowed. The current criteria: A player must have at least one Jewish parent and can’t practice another faith. (Practicing Judaism, however, is not required.) That rigor means Wallman and Moxson spend much of their time as religious detectives, scanning rosters for possible tribe members and tracking down the likeliest candidates.

“We’re the follow-uppers,” says Wallman, who handles the initial outreach. When the magazine launched in 1997, he would send postcards—each player got three before Wallman gave up. These days it’s all by email. He’ll go to the kid first if he can find the address online, to a school’s sports information director if he can’t. (Nearly all of the “maybes” are college students or high-schoolers—by the time a Jewish athlete makes the pros, he or she has been on the JSR’s radar for years.) If there’s no response, Wallman occasionally writes the school president. “Fifty percent of the time that gets some real activity going,” he says. If all else fails, Moxson follows up with a cold call.

But scanning names on rosters can only get you so far. “We’re not going to miss a Goldberg,” says Wallman. “But there’s no question that we miss a lot of people.”

To fill in the gaps, the JSR relies on tips from coaches, players, and readers. Often, an athlete’s family will get in touch directly. That’s how they found out Washington Nationals pitcher Jason Marquis: When he was in the minors, his mother called from Staten Island to ask why her boy wasn’t listed. Same story with former Duke point guard Jon Scheyer.

Still, every tip is a reminder of the work left to be done. “Who knows how many Youkilises and Marquises are out there?” Wallman asks.

That question doesn’t seem to annoy him at all.

Max Linsky is the co-founder and editor of Longform.org. He has written for Slate, Newsweek, and Fast Company.

Greenberg made his major league mark in the 1930s and ’40s, playing primarily for the Detroit Tigers. He was a first-baseman and a phenomenal batter. In 1938, in a single season, he hit 58 home runs. He made the All Star team five times, was twice named American League MVP, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1956, and still holds the American League record for runs batted in by a right-handed batter in a single season: 183 in 1937. Over this entire career, he had a whopping 1,276 RBIs.

Like Koufax, Greenberg sat out a game that fell on Yom Kippur; in Greenberg’s case it was during the 1934 pennant race. It sealed his fate as Jewish hero in an era that was virulently anti-Semitic at home and abroad. Greenberg accepted this role graciously but with some discomfort. Writer Mark Kurlansky has a new biography out about the star. It’s called Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One. Kurlansky speaks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about Greenberg’s improbable status as a Jewish icon (he was far from observant), the challenges he faced as arguably the highest profile Jewish sportsman in the mid-1930s, and why he is not better remembered by baseball fans today. [Running time: 15:41.]

• Aluf Benn argues that Obama successfully made it far more difficult for Israel to take military action against Iran’s nuclear weapons program. [Haaretz]

• Rep. Anthony Weiner in full. [Moment]

• The Ground Zero Islamic center, post-Bin Laden. [Capital]

• Gadi Taub prescribes “mutual unilateralism” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [TNR]

• The Washington Nationals’ Jason Marquis became only the fifth Jewish pitcher to win 100 games in the Major League. Mazel! [Jewish Baseball News]

The Daily visits Larry King’s new Beverly Hills bagel joint, which uses proprietary technology to “Brooklynize” the water used in the boiling process.

Mr. Selig, you are also a Jew, and therefore probably have an intuitive grasp of the connection the American Jewish community feels to this franchise.

Mr. Selig, sunshine and palm trees are great, and Dodger Stadium is wonderful: It makes you feel like you have stepped into the California scenes of Mad Men. L.A. has a very solid baseball fanbase, too. No disrespect here.

But, Mr. Selig, if you want to be remembered as a hero, you have one obvious move left: Move the team back to Brooklyn.

The borough is about to get a basketball team. It has experienced a resurgence that its newly team-less denizens of a half-century ago could never have imagined. It is therefore time. It is past time. The front entrance can even be named after Vin Scully.

L.A.? L.A. can have the Mets.

Baseball Taking Control of Dodgers’ Operations [NYT]
Related: Hit the Road, Frank [Slate]
The Dodgers: Los Angeles’s Answer to General Motors [The Atlantic Wire]

What’s remarkable about Fuld, as both the Times notes and Keri noted in a podcast he presciently did with him in January, is that he is both exactly the sort of player whom statistically savvy organizations like the Rays are looking for—above-average on defense, smart at base-running, able to work the count—and is himself a statistically savvy guy who has pursued a masters in statistics and who interned at top sports stats outfit Stats LLC, charting pitches for velocity, location, and pitch-type. “As monotonous as that sounds, I actually enjoyed it a lot,” he told Keri. “I just sat around in this room with about 20 other like-minded guys who enjoyed doing what I did.” Funny, that’s how I spend my day.

The Times doesn’t mention Fuld’s religion, noting only, “Fuld is also the kind of player [Rays general manager Andrew] Friedman wanted to be as an outfielder at Tulane, with similar sensibilities.” And actually, on his podcast, Keri doesn’t either, although I know that Keri, himself a Member of the Tribe, is aware of Fuld’s background. Keri does mention that the Rays very much see Fuld as someone they would like to keep in their organization after he retires from playing, much like, Keri says, Gabe Kapler—also a Jewish ballplayer.

What else? Oh, right: Legend of Sam Fuld. Or, more precisely: #legendofsamfuld has become a popular Twitter hashtag, adorning sayings that are reminiscent of Chuck Norris jokes. “Sam Fuld once struck out just to see how it felt,” reads one. “He didn’t like it. AT ALL. #LegendofSamFuld.” Here’s my favorite: “Manny who? #LegendofSamFuld.” Indeed.

Sam Fuld’s Value to the Rays Goes Beyond Numbers [NYT]
The Jonah Keri Podcast, Episode 16 [Jonah Keri]
Related: The Extra 2% [Amazon]
Earlier: Sam Fuld, Your New Baseball Hero

Fuld, the son of a University of New Hampshire professor and a state senator (and second cousin of Lehman Brothers’ Dick Fuld, though don’t hold that against him), married his high school sweetheart (the high school being Phillips Exeter) and graduated Stanford as the Pacific 10′s all-time leader in runs scored. Kevin Youkilis, Ian Kinsler, Ryan Braun, Danny Valencia, and Ike Davis: Watch your backs.

Sam Fuld, Rays Batter Dice-K in Rout of Red Sox [ESPN.com]

• In the course of reviewing Los Angeles’s new Holocaust museum, Edward Rothstein essentially asks if there are too many such places. [NYT]

• Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the designated new head of Reform Judaism, talks about his movement’s rivalry with Chabad. From 2008. [New Voices]

• On Bo Belinsky, the California Angels pitcher from the 1960s who was the original athlete-playboy (at least publicly). His mother was Jewish. [Deadspin]

• Tablet Magazine contributor Daniel Estrin reports on Jerusalem’s brand-new light rail system. [Business Week]

• A small gallery in a small town in northern Israel has slowly grown into what will be a permanent museum of Arab-Israeli and Palestinian art. [NYT]

Here’s an epic Vanity Fair piece from last year about the even more epic marriage(s) of Richard Burton and the late, lamented Elizabeth Taylor. And here they are in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Earlier: The Rangers Win the Pennant!
So Much for Our Team

• Iran agreed to nuclear talks, which will probably commence next month. They will be the first in over one year. [LAT]

• “In my opinion, there’s only one Judaism. There are no three Judaisms.” –Knesset Member Rotem. [Haaretz]

• BREAKING: The maternal grandmother of Mikhail Prokhorov, the billionaire Russian oligarch owner of the New Jersey Nets, was—of course—Jewish. Which means … [NYT Mag]

• The funeral of Judge Burton Roberts (the basis for the judge in Bonfire of the Vanities) turned into a celebration of the Bronx. [NYT]

• Best-selling Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany protested the translation of one of his books into Hebrew, because he does not agree with Arab countries having diplomatic ties with Israel. [Arts Beat]

• “Mantle looked back at me and said ‘How in the [****] are you supposed to hit that [****]?’” Sandy Koufax had that effect on people. [Kaplan’s Korner]

Happy Halloween! If your date warns you that “he’s not like other guys,” best take him at his word.

• Nextbook Press author Rebecca Newberger Goldstein raves over Nicole Krauss’s new novel Great House. [NYT Book Review]

• Another Nextbook Press author (and Tablet Magazine contributor) Ilan Stavans thinks you should go see Nora’s Will, a new film centering around a Mexican Jewish Seder. [Forward]

• Another Tablet Magazine contributor, Michelle Goldberg, upbraids the Anti-Defamation League for unfairly painting legitimate critics of Israel with the anti-Israel brush. [The Daily Beast]

• Famed and pioneering Columbia Law School Professor Louis Henkin died at 92. [CLS]

• Great pitcher Rube Marquard was not a Jew. But he was buried in a Jewish cemetery with his Jewish wife. [Kaplan’s Korner] Which is my way of reminding you to watch the Philadelphia Phillies’ Roy Halladay take on the San Francisco Giants’ Tim Lincecum tomorrow night in the National League Championship Series.

Sheila Broflovski, the most ostentatiously Jewish character on South Park, has a confession to make: She’s from New Jersey.

• All the major world powers, including the United States and China, have proposed nuclear talks with Iran for next month. [Laura Rozen]

• Prominent Palestinian intellectual Mustafa Barghouti proposes a unilateral declaration of independence “on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem.” (And Gaza?) [IHT]

• Tablet Magazine contributor Jon Kalish reviews Mark Jacobson’s The Lampshade. [Forward]

• Iranian President Ahmadinejad has formed an “independent and neutral team” to investigate U.S. complicity in 9/11. [NY Daily News/Vos Iz Neias?]

• New York Mets first baseman Ike Davis has promise, even if the Mets don’t. [Kaplan’s Korner]

Rabbi Levin on the teevee last night.

• The National League East-winning Philadelphia Phillies are the favorite, not at winning our endorsement but at winning, y’know, the World Series (among other things, they had the most wins this season, 97, although the Rays’ 96 are more impressive given their division). The champions two years ago and runner’s-up last year have essentially the same decent lineup, and, in Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, and Cole Hamels, claim three of the top ten pitchers in the league—pitching being how you win in the postseason. Philadelphia is America’s fourth-largest Jewish population center (by volume), and the Phillies’ general manager, Ruben Amaro, Jr., is the son of a Cuban-American ballplayer and of a local Jewish girl. He is a member of the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

• The NL wild-card team, the Atlanta Braves, make for a good, intergenerational story: Their most electrifying player is 21-year-old rookie right fielder Jason Heyward; their oldest member is 69-year-old manager Bobby Cox, who has one won World Series and more games than all but three other managers in history, and who has said this will be his final year. Atlanta is, of course, a not-insignificant Jewish population center.

• From a baseball perspective, the NL Central champion Cincinnati Reds are quite likable: Great heritage, great baseball town, super-likable star in first baseman Joey Votto. Their ex-owner (like but recently) was a horrific neo-Nazi racist scumbag, though, and I’m still not over that. Moving along.

• The San Francisco Giants have an interesting case to make, right? Once-great, they have suffered one of the longest championship droughts of all franchises not forbidden from ever winning a championship again. They reside in America’s seventh-largest Jewish population center, and of course hail from its largest, from back when their home stadium, the Polo Grounds, was at 155th Street in Manhattan. Then again, in Jewish terms, they arguably play second-fiddle to the Dodgers to the south; just as, back in the day, in Jewish terms, they arguably played second-fiddle to the Dodgers to the south-east.

• The American League East champion Rays have a bonanza of Jews. A Jewish player (back-up outfielder Gabe Kapler, who is currently injured and, Ron Kaplan notes, isn’t currently on the roster as a result); a Jewish majority owner (Stuart Sternberg); and a Jewish de facto general manager (Andrew Friedman). There’s even a false, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory floating around about their pitching rotation. Plus, the Rays are a likable young team that play an attractive style of baseball.

• The AL Central-winning Minnesota Twins play in the country’s newest and greenest stadium, honor the Twin Cities’ small but famously vibrant Jewish community, and start exciting Jewish rookie third baseman Danny Valencia. Fun squad, with an underrated manager (Ron Gardenhire, who is not Jewish).

• The AL West-winning Rangers and their new owner, Nolan Ryan, are the subject of an interesting Times Magazine story from this past Sunday, which will make you want to root for them unless you categorically don’t like Republicans. Their second baseman, Ian Kinsler, is Jewish and good. Let’s also just pause and note that this is the first season that both Washington Senators franchises (the Twins and the Senators/Rangers) made the playoffs.

• As for the AL wild card team, see this. Also this. Intellectual honesty compels me to note that the New York Yankees undoubtedly have more Jewish fans than any other baseball team. But they will not be our team.

• The Boston Red Sox did not win enough games to qualify for the postseason.

Judaism should mean rooting for the underdog, and you could most usefully define the word “underdog” with reference to the Yankees’ being its exact opposite. If they merely had the largest payroll in baseball, dayenu. But they have the largest payroll in baseball by more than $50 million. Their payroll is about 35 percent larger than second place (the Sox), about 150 percent larger than the median, and 500 percent larger than last place (the putrid Pirates of Pittsburgh).

At the least, our team should be in the bottom half of payrolls, which leaves us with the Rays and the Rangers. The Rays have Jewish ownership and a better chance. Go Tampa Bay!

• The smartest athlete is Oakland Athletics reliever Craig Breslow. If he weren’t sustaining a sub-3.00 ERA over five seasons, this Yale grad says, he’d be a doctor. [Insert requisite joke about how that’s what his mother would prefer anyway.]

• The ninth smartest athlete is veteran Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Brad Ausmus. A Dartmouth alum, he “just read The Lost City of Z, by David Grann. Moving on to The Accidental Billionaires, by Ben Mezrich” (one of us! one of us!). His favorite book, however, according to his Wikipedia page, is A Schopenhauerian Critique of Nietzsche’s Thought, which was written by his father, a professor. Um, yeah, we like that one too.

SN Names the 20 Smartest Athletes in Sports [Sporting News]

• A Palestinian Authority court confirmed that it is criminal for Palestinians to sell land to Jews or Jewish companies. Oh, yeah, and the penalty is death. Wait, what? [Haaretz]

• Rahm will (probably) run. [Politico]

• Ray Takeyh argues that President Ahmadinejad is in fact delusional, and the only real solution to the Iranian problem is the eventual takeover by the forces behind the Green Movement. [WP]

• Gentiles love mezuzahs! Can’t get enough of ‘em. [NYT]

• So Jewish pitcher Jason Marquis decided to pitch on Yom Kippur. The result? He was yanked after getting only one out in the first inning, having given up six earned runs. As a Nationals fan: Thanks a lot, Jason. [Kaplan’s Korner]

Perhaps you recognize the particular Old Jew who is Telling this Joke?

• First off, if you haven’t yet, do consider reading two excellent book reviews we ran this week in the midst of the High Holiday hubbub: Columnist Lee Smith on a revelatory new memoir about Israeli prime ministers; and Itamar Rabinovitch on the Balfour Declaration.

• The West Bank is closed til Saturday night. [JTA]

• Martin Peretz apologies. [The Spine]

• Tablet Magazine contributing editor Nathan Thrall reports on U.S. efforts to buttress Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s security services. [NYRB]

• After having his mom tell him to do what’s right, rookie New York Mets first baseman Ike Davis has decided to play tonight against the Atlanta Braves. [ESPN]

• Leslie Gelb points out that the “nothing bad can come from talking” trope actually isn’t true: Frequently, failed Mideast negotiations have been followed by increased bloodshed. [Daily Beast]

• Somebody wrote a poem about Hank Greenberg playing and then not playing in 1934. [Kaplan’s Korner]

• Tablet Magazine contributing editor Michael Weiss says U.S. envoy George Mitchell’s preferred comparison of Hamas to the Irish Republican Army is facile. [Slate]

• J.J. Goldberg praises strange bedfellows. [Forward]

• And if you haven’t read enough about Paul Berman’s The Flight of the Intellectuals, here’s yet another take. [n1br]

The basement-dwelling 2010 Washington Nationals are no 1965 Dodgers, and Nats pitcher Jason Marquis, who is Jewish, is certainly no Koufax. But Marquis is slated to start Friday night—Kol Nidre—at the Philadelphia Phillies, and (via Kaplan’s Korner) he plans on doing so (in fact, he has in past years, too). “Your team expects you to do your job and not let your teammates down, and that’s the approach I take,” he said.

Now, look. That is not an invalid response. And for every Koufax, there is also slugger Hank Greenberg, who in 1934 played on Rosh Hashanah while his Detroit Tigers were in a tight pennant race, only to sit out Yom Kippur once a World Series spot was all but secured. Moreover, I don’t think the importance (or lack of importance) of a big game should make a difference: If you feel you shouldn’t play on Yom Kippur, then that should include the World Series; if you feel you should, that should include a meaningless September regular season outing. And Marquis didn’t ask to be made a role model (which, given his 6.60 ERA this season, is maybe a good thing!).

But: Dude. Ask your manager to move your start. C’mon. How are Jewish 8-year-old Nats fans—poor schmucks—going to learn to observe the Highest of the Holidays?

Meanwhile, check Kaplan’s Korner for updates on Kevin Youkilis, Ryan Braun, and the rest.

Marquis Plans To Make Start on Kol Nidre [Miami Herald]
Earlier: Huge Yankees-Sox Game Set for Kol Nidre

• The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research has already found upwards of 15,000 volumes in Chaim Grade’s old apartment. [Arts Beat]

• Forward cartoonist Eli Valley discusses his life and work. [The Comics Journal]

• Christopher Hitchens further elaborates on the topic of praying (and not praying) for him. [VF]

• Reza Aslan and Bernard Avishai call on President Obama to do all in his power to prevent Israel from taking military action against Iran. [IHT]

• Buzz Bissinger asks: Who are the two Jewish pitchers who won the Cy Young Award? Peruse his whole feed to find the answer. [@buzzbissinger]

Kelly says she is gunning for Amanda Baumgarten, our only remaining Jewish cheftestant, now that Alex “Creepball Weirdo” Reznik has left the building.

Oh, also, Angelo, generally Joe Cool, has been freaking out. “Angelo’s been really weird some times,” Amanda relates. “He talks to himself, and says mantras, like, ‘You’re gonna win,’ stuff like that,” but you can’t hear the rest, because Amanda is collapsing with laughter. The notion that any chef thinks he is going to win is understandably very, very funny to Amanda.

Quickfire Challenge! The guest judge is former Top Chef Masters winner Rick Moonen. And the challenge: Cook a food idiom—like take a saying involving food but make it an actual thing—and the winner’s dish will be made into a Schwan’s frozen meal. Choose among the following idioms: Bring Home the Bacon; Hide the Salami; Sour Grapes; Go Nuts; Big Cheese; Hot Potato; Spill the Beans; Bigger Fish to Fry; and Hung Like a Horse. Okay I made the last one up.

“I choose The Big Cheese,” says Amanda. “I don’t immediately know what I want to do with cheese, but I like cheese.” She likes the kind that gets all stringy. What’s it called? Oh right, String Cheese. That’s another food idiom. She quickly decides on macaroni and tomato sauce. Sorry, I meant macaroni and cheese. Cheese.

Oh look, Alex’s replacement.

“I think my dish might make a good Schwan’s frozen meal,” says Amanda, “because the mac and cheese out there—it’s a little lackluster.” Do anyone but Jews use the word “lackluster”? “I’m a macaroni and cheese aficionado,” she continues, “because before I was the age of 15, that was all I ate.” At 15, she switched to French bread pizza; 16 was the year of Sloppy Joe; and at 17, it was whatever she could find in the Dumpster outside her studio on the outskirts of Buffalo.

“I’m not a big fan of Amanda,” says Ed. “She’s annoying. She’s a slob.” Better than a snob, am I right? Say, Ed, how did Sam Sifton review your restaurant again? “There’s just no technique,” he continues. “I think she’s just been lucky the whole time she’s been here.” Jews don’t have luck, Ed—they have seichel. Unless their name is Amanda Baumgarten, in which case, yes, they have been quite lucky.

“A lot of people talk a lot of trash about Amanda, but I think she’s a dark horse,” Angelo rebuts. He has been singing this tune for awhile. “She’s actually very smart. And she just sleeks by everybody.”

Amanda is acting like a crazy person, but so is everyone else (except for even-keeled Kelly). It’s like they’ve all caught up with her? Or regressed back toward her? What’s the word you use when a bunch of people all start taking drugs? “Angelo’s a little crazy, right?” observes Amanda, clearly very appreciative. “Ed looks like he’s about to die. He’s making gnocchi in an hour. I look across the kitchen and all I see is sweat and a red face.” Ed, red-faced? Probably because of that review! OKAY I’LL STOP NOW.

“I made my favorite way to make macaroni and cheese,” Amanda tells the judges. It’s with bacon and jalapenos and … a massive pork chop on the side?

Um, really? Didn’t someone else get the “I’m Carrying So Much Pork, I’ve Got Trichinosis” food idiom? (Yes, it was Phil Gramm.) “So you kept it nice and light,” Rick Moonen says in a deadpan (I think he’s joking though).

“With mac and cheese, you either go big or go home,” Amanda responds. Do you really want to give me an opening like that? More to the point, do you really want to give the judges an opening like that?

Kelly’s is Moonen’s least favorite. Apparently brussels sprouts and concord grape purée don’t go well together. Who could have guessed? Oh and he also didn’t like Amanda’s! “It was kind of a like a sledgehammer to the gut.” But in a bad way, you see.

Amanda would like to take issue with that assessment! “For the first time, I disagree with them,” she tells the camera of the judges. Which means that all the myriad other times this season that the judges have told her something of hers sucks, she has assented.

Moonen loves Kevin’s Bring Home the Bacon, which is super-unfair, because bacon is really delicious (I’m told). He also loves Ed’s gnocchi. Who’s red-faced now? And Ed wins! Vindication! Gnocchi with mushrooms and some herbs is now going to be flash-frozen and distributed to thousands of supermarkets throughout the land, courtesy of Schwan’s. Angelo notes that this is appropriate because Ed’s face looks like a potato. See?

Oops, wrong photo. Gimme one more try.

There.

“For your Elimination Challenge,” says Padma Lakshmi, “you’ll be cooking for one of the oldest sports institutions in the country. We’re taking you out to the ballgame!” Yes, the Washington Nationals, a truly old and venerable franchise (Website here: www.montrealexpos.com) founded in 1969. That’s so old! Like Madonna-old!

They’ll be serving high-end concession stand food, as a single team, making at least six dishes. Which is nuts, because if you’re at Nats Stadium, you’re going up against Ben’s. You’re screwed. They make amazing chili, and the half-smoke dog—half beef, half pork—is delicious (I’m told).

Amanda is scared of the team-y nature of the challenge. It positively teams with peril! “The last team challenge did not go well,” she recalls. Cue sepia-toned flashback: I see dead people! Spooooooooon!

Is Alex Reznik the Ghost of Top Chef Future, or Past? At first, the remaining cheftestants seem to be getting along better, maybe because one of the alpha dogs (Kenny) is gone and the other (Angelo) has gotten a lobotomy off-camera. Kelly seems to be the one in control now.

“I would love to do something cold, using crab,” Amanda says. If only there were some typical dish that used cold crabmeat.

“I’m thinking some sort of crabcake,” Kelly replies. Right, that’s it. Then she adds, “Can you go fish instead of shellfish?” Kelly, we’re trying to plan a meal, not play a children’s card game! Oh, wait, you meant Amanda should cook fish. Amanda, what say you?

“Yeah … yeah.” Kelly proceeds to make a crabcake instead. Hey, Kelly, you suck!

Walking out, a few folks shout their favorite teams’ names. “Go Red Sox.” “Go Phillies.” “Go Dodgers.” Oh, good, only two out of the three most annoying fanbases are represented—presumably Yankees fans are too busy enjoying their team being good and cheering an anti-Semitic tenor during the seventh inning stretch. (Seriously, though, has everyone else noticed that Phillies fans are the new Red Sox fans? Some teams just aren’t meant to win championships, you know. Really, the Yankees should just win every year so that they can give our lives meaning with the cleansing power of hate.)

“I wanna make a statement, so I’m going to make a tuna tartare,” Amanda announces. Fine. But then she tells us that she is tartaring—yes, it’s suddenly a verb, too—the day before rather than the day of; seasoned Top Chef viewers (no pun intended), confronted with the producers’ revealing this otherwise-random detail, should be able to sense nascent catastrophe. “I don’t want to have a temperature-sensitive mise en place project when I walk into a kitchen that I’ve never seen before,” is how Amanda justifies her tartarrible decision. Pride and the gratuitous use of pretentious French phrases cometh before a fall.

Meanwhile, Ed is going crazy! Angelo calls him the Tasmanian devil. “He’s yelling at Tiffany,” recounts Amanda, “he’s out of control. You fall victim to the pressure, then you’re not going to make good decisions, and you can be sent home for that.” Oh, the expert! Wait, she actually is the expert on this subject.

Back at the Kalorama manse, the chefs suddenly realize that they may have to take orders in addition to cooking. This could pose problems. Hilarious problems! Sexy problems! Actually, probably just hilarious ones. And then Angelo steps up and says he’s going to do it. Dunh-dunh-dunnnnnnh.

Woo, go Nats! “The Nationals Park is amazing,” says Kevin (it’s alright, it’s no Camden Yards), “you can tell that it’s brand-new” (it’s three years old).

Hey, why is Mr. Clean on the show and dressed like a hipster?

And we have a few players to join us before the game. Ladies and gentlemen, playing first base, and second in the National League in home runs, Adam Dunn! And pitcher Matt Capps, our one All-Star whom we traded shortly thereafter ☹, and pitcher John Lannan, who once wrote a great song called “Imagine.” (Unfortunately, Jason Marquis, the Nats’ Jewish pitcher, doesn’t show. Marquis’s ERA this season is 8.79. That’s not one of my exaggerated-y jokes. Jason Marquis is in fact giving up one earned run per inning.)

Kelly thinks the ballplayers are cute—apparently she doesn’t care about atrocious facial hair. “They are the largest men I think I’ve seen,” says Amanda, straining to remember them all. (That was a little mean. Bad Marc.) “All I can think of,” she adds, “is, ‘You, get the hell out of here.’ You and your tree trunks.” I just transcribe it, folks.

Back to the food. “As time is ticking down,” says Amanda, “I notice my tuna’s not red, it’s a little gray.” Dear catastrophe!

“She should’ve put oil on it so it doesn’t oxidize,” Angelo tells us, like it’s something any basic professional chef would know. Which it probably is.

The ballplayers come by and order one of each—Lannan and Capps, because I assume they’re not pitching that day; and Dunn, because he is old-school and awesome (he sticks his finger into the tartare and chomps it off: Sweet). Dunn says he wants a second of Tiffany’s meatball sandwiches to eat around the sixth inning. God I love ballplayers.

Kelly has crab cake, and used Old Bay, which gets points in my book; Tiffany has an Italian meatball sub; Angelo has sweet glazed pork on lobster roll (sort of like a Momofuku bun); Kevin is offering chicken kabob with shoestring fries; Ed’s got shrimp and corn fritters. Amanda? Yellowfin tuna tartare with fennel, meyer lemon and fava bean purée. One of these things is not like the other … .

Amanda further acknowledges that it is slightly risky to serve gray tuna tartare to Eric freakin’ Ripert. “But I actually really like the flavor,” she adds. Which means that if the judges don’t like the flavor, she will yet again be forced to take the bold step of registering her profound disagreement with the panelists behind their backs. “Hopefully, the judges are going to be judging first and foremost on the taste,” emphasis hers. Judges, take it away!

“I’m going to tell you something, man,” Moonen tells Padma (who is technically not a man, but we’ll let it slide). “Raw fish at a stadium: That takes some baseballs.”

Eric Ripert, how do you like it? “I really don’t want to eat a tartare with the color of the tuna being so gray.” He is judging by the color of its skin, not the content of its character, and we know what that means. Tom has some praise for her vegetables, though. The judges seem to be liking all the dishes. Except some people have some minor schtick with Kevin’s kabob. And they hate Angelo’s use of a hot dog roll.

Interlude! Angelo is talking to his fiancée, who lives in Russia! They have only met a few times! But they talk every night for “like five, six hours”! This is not at all creepy! Here is a picture of her!

Then they show Adam Dunn hitting a home run later that night. Go Nats!

Back to Judges’ Table. Ed is the winner! Sam Sifton, what say you now? Whoa, and he gets a trip to Australia? I want to win an Elimination Challenge.

Now it’s time for the fails, and for the judges to decide who is the epic-est of them. “When you put too much air with the fish, it oxidizes and becomes black,” Ripert explains to Amanda after Tom is done praising her vegetables. She knows, she knows. Tom says she should have tartared (there’s that verb again) on the day of. Kevin’s kabob was hard to eat, and the fries became soggy. Oops. They nitpick on Kelly’s crabcake, but she’s clearly not going home. Angelo’s problem was the bread. “The proportion of bread to everything that’s inside it is so important,” Tom insists. It’s math.

Now the chefs have returned to the pantry, and Ripert is still complaining about Kevin’s kabob. “The skewer for me was too long, and it was touching the bottom of my mouth,” he says. (Good thing this is a family blog!) Plus the fries were stupid. Kevin’s in trouble.

But then there is Amanda. “I was offended by the color of the product,” says Ripert. This is what he looks like when he’s offended.

Yet Tom is still standing up for the vegetables! And he likes the concept.

Finally, Angelo. That spongy, soggy bread!

The chefs are back. “Unfortunately, you made a few errors,” Tom tells them, and I’m actually not positive the pun is intended. Whom is going to be pinch-hit for? Whom is the manager going to yank from the mound? Some third baseball metaphor?

Wow. I mean, opposite of “wow,” but also, wow. 1, 2. Two weeks, two Jews go, and suddenly none are left. “Thank you guys so much, this has been an awesome opportunity,” is Amanda’s sign-off.

And it’s mine too.

Aww, just kidding. There may not be any more Jews, but we still have a blog to fill. See you next week!

Earlier: Episode 10: Blown Cover
Episode 9: War Comes to Bethesda
Episode 8: Ethiopian Cabbage
Episode 7: The Purloined Purée
Episode 6: Of Tragedy and Testicles
Episode 5: You’re Tearing Me Apart, Maryland!
Episode 4: Babies Making Baby Food
Episode 3: Booze Jokes, Not Funny Anymore
Episode 2: Giving Booze to Kids
Episode 1: Cheftestant Cooks His Mother’s Borscht

Jewish ballplayer Ike Davis heads home after slamming a solo shot in the fifth inning yesterday. He also scored a run in the previous inning. The New York Mets beat the Minnesota Twins 6-0 at Citi Field in Queens.

Photograph by the author.

A couple notes. First, I’d like to take a bow: I previously suggested Youkilis could be considered the ’00’s best Jewish athlete. Second, the objectively arbitrary terms of the debate—the best Jewish ballplayer from 2000-09—skew unfavorably against Green (who was fantastic in the late-’90s and early-’00s before petering out) and Braun (who was a rookie in 2007 and will almost certainly be the best Jewish ballplayer of, say, 2008-2017). Additionally, by Scroll law, every time we mention Youkilis we are obliged to link to this incredible clip.

Finally, the poll’s sponsor, Jewish Major Leaguers, is based … in Boston. So we wouldn’t be surprised if similar polls by them revealed that Larry Bird was the best basketball player of the 1980s, Drew Bledsoe was the best quarterback of the 1990s, and the Red Sox are the greatest team of all time.

Youkilis Wins Vote as Top Jewish Player in 2000s [JTA]

Earlier: Who Is This Decade’s Best Jewish Athlete?

The one place where Lester was “political” were his insistent pleas, first lodged over a decade before Jackie Robinson put on the uniform of Lester’s beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, that Major League Baseball allow blacks to play. In 1942, he wrote in an open letter to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis:

Negro soldiers and sailors are among those beloved heroes of the American people who have already died for the preservation of this country and everything this country stands for—yes, including the great game of baseball. You, the self-proclaimed ‘Czar’ of baseball, are the man responsible for keeping Jim Crow in our National Pastime. You are the one refusing to say the word which would do more to justify baseball’s existence in this year of war than any other single thing.

No, they don’t make ‘em like Rodney Lester anymore.

Lester Rodney, Early Fighter Against Racism in Sports, Dies at 98 [NYT]

But maybe the most compelling candidate, whom the JC does not mention, is for Kevin Youkilis. In the past decade, the Boston Red Sox first baseman won two World Series rings, including the first such piece of jewelry won by Boston in nearly 80 years; made himself into a fantastic power hitter (29 home runs, 115 RBIs in 2008); and played a major role in the rise of sophisticated statistical analysis of the game, serving as perhaps the prime example of a player whose superior ability to get walked made him severely underrated. In Michael Lewis’s Moneyball—the most important sports book of the decade—Youkilis’s nickname is “The Greek God of Walks.” But as those who have seen this clip know, Youkilis is not Greek.

Jewish Sports Person of the Decade [Jewish Chronicle]

By the time I realized what was what, it was too late. I had become a fan. With remarkably few exceptions, I approached each April with hope springing eternal, dreaming of wild cards and pennants and all the world’s glories. Come October, I would cower, morose and defeated, and watch some other team bathe in ticker tape and champagne. By now, heartbreak has become a habit.

Watching the World Series unfold this week and last, and witnessing the inevitable march to greatness of my team’s crosstown rivals, the New York Yankees, I sped through the Seven Stages of Met fanhood, experiencing first shame, then anger, and, finally, acceptance. I was about to turn off the TV. I didn’t want to see A-Rod, Jeter, Damon, and the other pin-striped primadonnas celebrate their 27th championship. And then came game five, and Chase Utley’s homeruns, and the Philadelphia Phillies, trailing 3-1 and on the verge of extinction, won the game and looked, for a split second, as if they might unseat the Yankees and claim victory.

My mind raced. I imagined a historic upset. I fantasized about the Yankees, standing, stunned, in their lavish new stadium, forced to watch their rivals rejoice. I thought about calling every Yankees fan I know and gloating until I could gloat no more. But nothing of the sort happened: game six arrived, the Yankees delivered, the title was won. Miracles don’t happen to Mets fans, with one or two notable exceptions.

They do, however, abound in this week’s haftorah, which recounts the story of Elisha, the disciple of the great prophet Elijah, and a woman who’s exceedingly kind to him. She furnishes a room in her house for the holy man, and generously hosts him every time he comes by her part of town. Seeking to repay the favor, Elisha notices that the woman is without children, and that her husband is elderly. Familiar with the story of the aged Sarah giving birth to Isaac—recounted in this week’s parasha—Elisha promises the woman a son. Just like her ancient matriarch, she doubts the veracity of the prophecy, and, again like Sarah, is shocked when a son eventually materializes.

But the boy soon falls ill, and, unlike Isaac and his intervening angel, no divine entity saves the child from dying. Incensed, the woman goes to see Elisha; grabbing his feet, she begins to moan. “Did I desire a son of my Lord?” she cries. “Did I not say: do not deceive me?” Moved, Elisha gives his staff to Gehazi, his faithful assistant, and sends the apprentice back to the woman’s home to revive the boy. Gehazi tries and fails, and Elisha himself arrives, praying to the Lord and breathing life into the dead child.

It’s the Jewish take on of the story of Lazarus, the man who Jesus, according to the Gospel of John, brought back from the dead. But Elisha couldn’t by anymore different from the Nazarene if he tried. When Jesus learns of Lazarus’s death, we’re treated to what is perhaps theology’s best-known show of emotion: “Jesus wept.” Elisha, on his end, remains unmoved. Jesus performs his miracle in public; the small crowd gathered outside of Lazarus’s tomb all become instant believers in his teachings. Elisha works alone, in silence, behind closed doors. Even his assistant isn’t allowed in the room.

These are no minor differences. Watching Christ revive his man, we’re supposed to believe in his power to reverse the natural order. He’s bigger than the universe, and he happily proves it. If we take the story on faith, the world becomes, quite literally, a magical kingdom, a heady realm in which God, or His son, has the power to condemn and redeem us all at will. If we believe, in other words, all we have to do is trust Jesus as our own personal savior, and pray that when the time comes, he’ll be there for us as well, and carry us, too, alive and kicking, out of our tombs and back into the light.

Elisha puts forth a very different vision. Bringing back the dead, he realizes, is an act so incongruous with everything we know the world to be that no one but the inspirited man of God should be allowed to see it happen. Elisha doesn’t want us to believe in him. He does his best to downplay his own powers, sending his servant first and personally intervening only as a last resort. He doesn’t want people to mistake him, a mere servant of God, for the savior himself. Only God has the power to rewrite life’s fundamental rules—to part the waters, say, or make a dead boy breathe again. But God, alas, is strange to us mortals. By the nature of our being, we possess neither the intellect nor the insight to know the Lord’s ways. Therefore, Elisha insists, it’s prudent not to spend too much time waiting for miracles to happen; better focus on our own powers, our own skills, our own agency instead. Put simply, Elisha is telling us this: miracles don’t happen, unless they do. And when they do happen, don’t expect them to happen again.

These are words any Mets fans instinctively understands. This week, for a brief moment, I suspected a minor miracle might occur, that the God of baseball may see it fit to punish the wicked Yankees, that us bitter and damned denizens of Citi Field may yet enjoy a brief moment of spiteful mirth. It didn’t happen. It rarely does.

Yanks Bench Tenor After Jewish ‘Joke’ [NBC New York]

One wants to see the hand of Adonai Himself in the uncanny timing whereby the High Holidays always fall smack in the middle of the pennant race and postseason, tempting the talented faithful. Anyway, given that the Sox are currently a mere 6.5 games behind the Yankees, we’d guess most New Yorkers are hoping Youkilis has so many sins that he has no choice but to Kol Nidre the night away.

An Unholy Move by ESPN [New York Post]
Green, Koufax, and Greenberg—Same Dilemma, Different Decisions [ESPN Classic]
Previously: Look, Jews in Baseball!
Yankees Trade For a Jew

Bases Loaded, with Jewish Ballplayers! [Boston Globe]
A Grand Slam Decade for Jewish Majorleaguers [Jewish Ledger]