Israel Baseball League Opens
Professional Ball Comes to the Holy Land starting June 24
The new professional Israel Baseball League begins its season on June 24 with a sprinkling of Jewish former Major League Baseball stars at the helm.
When Boston businessman Larry Baras was growing up, his Orthodox Jewish father did many things religiously on Friday nights. He went to synagogue, blessed the wine, ate his Sabbath meal with the family—then went upstairs to read The Sporting News.
“In my childhood,” Baras recalls, “baseball and Judaism were intertwined.”
Now Baras is spreading his love of the sport to a country where Jews are many, but baseballs are few—Israel.
Baras, founder and president of the new Israel Baseball League, has been working for two years to bring professional baseball to Israel. On June 24 his dream will come true when the Petach Tikva Pioneers take on the Modi’in Miracle. The 45-game IBL season will last two months, ending with a championship playoff. An All-Star game is scheduled for mid-July.
Baras has tapped three Jewish former major leaguers—Ken Holtzman, Art Shamsky and Ron Blomberg—to manage three of the league’s six teams. But you don’t have to be Jewish to play. Dan Duquette, former general manager of the Red Sox and the Expos, will serve as the league’s director of baseball. Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig and his daughter Wendy Selig-Prieb have signed on as advisors.
Jewish fans have bittersweet memories of Holtzman, who outpitched their idol Sandy Koufax in Koufax’s last regular season game in 1966. Holtzman retired with five World Series rings in his pocket and “divorced myself from baseball. Being a manager didn’t have a lot of meaning for me,” he says.
When the IBL came calling, Holtzman had a change of heart. “The opportunity to promote the sport in a country like Israel is terrific,” says Holtzman, who, like many of the IBL’s 120 players, has never visited the Jewish state before.
Koufax drafted by Modi'in
He will arrive in Israel about five days before the season starts and meet his team for the first time. The league’s players come from nine countries, including the U.S., the Dominican Republic, Australia, Russia and Japan. Tryouts were held last year in Massachusetts, Florida, Los Angeles and the Dominican Republic. In April, the signed players participated in a 10-round draft where team reps selected their top choices. In a sentimental moment, the Miracle used their last pick to draft the 71-year old Koufax.
The disadvantage of the system, says Holtzman is the managers have five days to learn their players’ strengths and weaknesses. The advantage is that all six managers are in the same boat.
Baras was inspired to bring baseball to Israel after attending a minor league baseball game. He wanted a way to support Israel that didn’t involve sitting on committees, and he became convinced that family-style baseball was the way to go. Unlike fast-moving sports like soccer and basketball, baseball has a leisurely pace not found in Israeli culture.
”We’re just trying to have fun and create more links between Israel and the U.S.,” says Baras.
To make baseball more appealing to Israelis, all games will be seven innings, and ties will be determined by a home run derby. Baras says he doesn’t expect games to run more than two hours.
Baras has received some criticism in the Israeli media for bringing yet another American cultural icon to Israel. After all, Israel has football and basketball. Who needs a third sport?
“When Ben and Jerry went to Israel,” Baras responds, “the Israelis said ‘we have ice cream.’ Then they discovered that Ben and Jerry was a different kind of ice cream.
“When they see what a departure baseball is, I think they’ll fall in love with the game like we did.”
