Holyland Hardball: You Can Go Home Again
There is something magical about baseball.
Football may be Sunday’s sport, but baseball is enshrined as America’s pastime from the beginning of spring through the middle of fall. It is an American tradition, handed down – or tossed – from generation to generation.
A simple game of catch, you could argue, represents the essence of father-son bonding. In the classic baseball movie Field of Dreams Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella builds a baseball field in rural Iowa for the sake of reuniting with his dead father over a game of catch.
Larry Baras is a bagel man from Boston, and it was the loss of his father that inspired him to build his own field of dreams. This sports documentary, Holyland Hardball, chronicles Baras’ quixotic quest to bring baseball to Israel. In the midst of a midlife crisis punctuated by his father’s death in 2005, Baras looked for a productive project to focus his energy and resources. A longtime baseball enthusiast, he dreamed of creating the Israel Baseball League, with a professional six-team roster, and he quickly began to turn his vision into reality.
Baras played Moses but got farther, settling his tribe of ballplayers across the Jordan River. Like Moses he met serious challenges; his began before the first pitch was thrown. Mishaps with customs, the difficulty of finding suitable ball fields, and the Israelis’ general apathy toward the American sport were overcome by Baras’s determination, and the matching determination of the managers and players he recruited from around the world.
The players’ personal stories, their reasons for participating in the league, and their bonds on and off the field provide a realistic glimpse of athletes seeking to reach their own goals.
The co-creators of the film, Brett Rapkin and Erik Kesten, tell an inspiring story. Getting the IBL even to first base was bumpy and challenging, and the film captivates as its leaders make their miracles happen in the Promised Land.
The film focuses primarily on the making of the IBL in 2007, which was its first – and only – season. It falls short, though, in that it touches only superficially on the relationship between Jews and baseball. Understanding this relationship would make the reason for planting the seeds of baseball in Israel even more meaningful.
American Jews have a longstanding love affair with baseball. The waves of Jewish immigration in the mid-19th century coincided with baseball’s development and subsequent popularity across the country. Baseball’s prized place in American Judaism was clear to Solomon Schechter, the first president of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the founder of United Synagogue. “In order to be a success in the American rabbinate, you must be able to talk baseball,” he said.
While Schechter’s words may be apocryphal, their truth is undeniable. By early in the 20th century, baseball had become an integral part of American life. A century later baseball metaphors pervade our speech, families make pilgrimages to ballparks across North America, and social trends are played out on its diamonds.
American Jews not only enjoy baseball, we also gauge our place within American society through the game. For us, Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, the most prominent Jews in baseball history, are not just great ballplayers; they are icons who signify our acceptance within mainstream society. We share their successes as if they were our own.
Every Jewish child knows the story of Sandy Koufax declining to pitch during the 1965 World Series when game day fell on Yom Kippur. Greenberg had made the same decision during a pennant race in 1934. Their public embracing of Jewish tradition – let’s not discuss Shabbat right now – somehow legitimized our place within America and our desire to practice Judaism openly. Because of Koufax and Hammerin’ Hank, every Jewish ballplayer since – Shawn Green, Kevin Youkilis, Ryan Braun, to name a few – faces the same question about whether to play on Yom Kippur, should their teams still be playing that late in the season. No sermon could ever do as much for Jewish pride and practice as their public decisions not to play on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.
My own first foray into public observance took place at Fenway Park, where my family would root for our beloved Boston Red Sox. When we were young, my brothers and I would make every effort to attend opening day. Since opening day frequently falls during Passover, the experience of bringing our own food to the ballpark is engrained in my memory. There was the awkward shame of eating macaroons, matzah, and cheese, while it seemed that all the rest of the Fenway Faithful ate peanuts, popcorn, and Cracker Jacks. While some fans gave us funny looks as we unwrapped our matzah, we always were relieved to see other fans with their own Passover-friendly snacks. Throughout the years, bringing matzah became an edible albeit crumby manifestation of our Jewish commitment. In some ways, Sandy Koufax made us feel comfortable eating matzah at Fenway.
Koufax’s place in both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the pantheon of American Jewish heroes made him the logical choice as the IBL’s symbolic first draft pick. Although he declined to pitch – he was 71 – this tribute links the American Jewish experience of baseball to Baras’ dreamchild, the IBL.
Getting Israelis to take an interest in baseball was a major hurdle for the IBL. In Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella famously heard a voice telling him “If you build it, they will come.” Larry Baras had no such assurance. In fact, he had no reason to believe that anyone would ever come to watch one of his games.
The responsibility for making the league attractive, competitive, and viable fell to the IBL’s director of baseball operations, Dan Duquette, who was once the Red Sox’s general manager. The link between IBL and the Red Sox seems awfully appropriate, because no team understands overcoming obstacles better than the Red Sox (and the Chicago Cubs). Who better to lead this league than someone like Duquette, who knows about Herculean challenges and the need for miracles firsthand?
When you look at the game of baseball through a Zionist lens, you see that transplanting it to Israel makes emotional sense. The goal of a baseball game is to return home. Players run the bases, get as far away as possible, and then make it home again. Baseball is the only major American sport played without a clock. Time doesn’t matter. The purpose of the game is to return home, no matter how long it takes to get there. It’s just like the Jewish people’s quest to return to our homeland after thousands of years. It doesn’t matter how long it takes.
The fact that the baseball season opens in the spring links it to the Jewish calendar. Baseball is played on lush, green grass, like karpas, the leafy greens we eat at the Passover seder to celebrate rebirth and renewal. While Alexander Pope asserts that hope springs eternal, every baseball fan and committed Jew believes that spring provides eternal hope. Such is the magic of baseball as well as the allure of a Jewish life of faith. Baras had the vision to blend the two in a land of miracles.
Holyland Hardball is uplifting because Larry Baras, the IBL’s Herzl, wills his dream to fruition. Schechter’s comments about the relationship between baseball and American Judaism stand true a century later. I wonder if Schechter realized how much baseball also embodies the Zionist dream – the journey home.
Rabbi Charles E. Savenor is directorof United Synagogue’s Metropolitan New York district.
