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Oct. 12, 2007
Batter up ... except on holy days
Greenberg broke through the ranks to become the world's first
Jewish superstar athlete.
EUGENE KAELLIS
In the days when baseball was still the beloved American national
pastime, Hank Greenberg was a man all people could look up to, for
his actions both on and off the diamond.
Greenberg was born on Jan. 1, 1911, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood
of New York City. He was the third of five children of David and
Sarah, both Rumanian-born immigrants. When he was seven, his family
moved to a large house in the Bronx.
Greenberg always loved playing baseball, during holidays and on
his high school team. By the age of 16, he had developed a batting
style that he then used for the rest of his career.
Upon graduation from high school, Greenberg joined a semi-professional
team. A New York Yankees scout had managed to persuade his parents
to allow him to become a full-time ball player instead of becoming
a lawyer, as they preferred.
Relatively few Jews became full-time athletes; conventionally, they
entered the professions or went into business. Both of these pursuits
offered them some insulation from expressions of on-the-job bigotry
and permitted them to observe the Sabbath and Jewish holidays.
Greenberg, however, ended up signing with the Detroit Tigers, who
were so interested in his skills that they gave him a substantial
signing bonus and agreed to wait until he finished college before
bringing him to play for them. They didn't have to wait for long.
After one semester at the New York University School of Commerce,
he gave up college and started playing baseball professionally.
"To know the heart and mind of America, one must learn baseball,"
said French intellectual Jacques Barzun, who immigrated to the United
States and became a distinguished observer of American culture.
In some ways, the history of major league baseball resembles that
of the United States. The league was racially segregated until 1947,
when its first Black player, Jackie Robinson, joined the Brooklyn
Dodgers. Up until then, Black players played on separate teams,
in smaller venues and more communal settings, and had much closer
connections with their fans. At times, the teams even donated a
share of their ticket earnings to Black student college funds. For
this reason, many Black fans opposed the integration of the big
leagues; they felt that they had lost the familiarity they had experienced
when competing against other all-Black teams.
The entry of Black and, later, Hispanic and Asian, players was part
of the transition of big league baseball into the corporate big
business it is now.
Greenberg's first full year in the majors was 1933. Back then, he
was subjected to anti-Semitic taunts from fans, similar to the racist
insults Jackie Robinson would encounter. Later on, after the color
barrier in baseball had been broken, in some places, Black players
were still denied hotel rooms – discrimination that Greenberg
personally and successfully challenged.
In spite of fans' nostalgia for the "old days," baseball
players today are much better athletes than their predecessors were,
and fans are better behaved. Most of the time, ballpark fans are
enthusiastic but genial.
While in the early days of integration, fans occasionally used racial
and ethnic insults, today, such cases are extremely rare. American
baseball has never seen the hooliganism too often associated with
European soccer matches.
These days, Jews are a rarity in commercial organized sports, but
that wasn't always the case. During the Depression, there were a
number of professional Jewish boxers, driven to that demanding and
dangerous sport by sheer necessity. In the 1950s, Jews, who lived
almost entirely in crowded urban environments, were prominent in
basketball.
Although there had been a few Jewish professional baseball players
before Greenberg, he – and later Sandy Koufax – were by
far the most famous. Both went down in baseball, and Jewish, history,
for refusing to play on Yom Kippur. Greenberg even missed a pennant
playoff game, which his team eventually lost.
Greenberg had an impressive build: he was tall, muscular, dark-haired
and, despite having flat feet, he moved quickly on the field. He
was recognized by sportswriters as "one of the greatest power
hitters of all time." On his return to baseball, after serving
four years as a volunteer officer in the United States air force,
he was named "the comeback of 1945." He was also a two-time
Most Valuable Player in the American League and, at one time, he
was the highest-paid baseball player. In 1954, Greenberg became
the first Jewish player to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
In 1947, Greenberg was released from his contract with the Tigers
and went to play for the Pittsburgh Pirates at a higher salary.
However, his age and a history of broken bones and floating bone
chips reduced his abilities and he was benched at his own request.
On "Hank Greenberg Day," celebrating his baseball career,
he gave all the money collected from generous fans to help aid the
physically handicapped.
In 1946, Greenberg married Caral Gimbel, of the department store
family. He later divorced her and remarried. He still kept in shape
with various sports activities and, with the help of a professional
writer, penned his autobiography. He died of kidney cancer in 1986,
close to his 75th birthday.
Eugene Kaellis is a retired academic living in New Westminster.
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