An intriguing documentary that traces how a Jewish
presence on the baseball field and in the stadium bleachers evolved over the years. For someone like me who could write what I know about the game on a post-it, and who is hardly an authority of American Judaism it was quite an eye opener
…..although there times when narrator Dustin Hoffman overloads us with endless
batting + pitching statistics, my eyes started to glaze over.
Evidently the from the end of the 19th
Century up to 1924 c. 2 million Jews immigrants arrived to settle in the
US. One of the ways they tried to assimilate
into the American culture was via sport esp. baseball. Up till then Jewish men were not considered
as being very athletic and into games so this was going to be against the grain. This movie tells the story of how players emerged and
when they became stars and started playing for major league teams such as
Brooklyn Dodgers then Jewish fans started filling the stadiums.
The movie focuses on the first two players who became
major national stars Hank Greenberg in the 30’s & 40’s Stanley Koufacs in
the 50’s & 60’s whose success came at a price with all the anti-Semitism that
they had to deal with. They however acted
as role models feted by the community especially when they decided to forgo essential World Series Matches when they were on important Jewish Holidays.
Now there are Jews everywhere in the game : players,
managers, owners and even a Baseball Commissioner. And I guess we all live happily ever after on the playing field at least. And my history lesson is over, and (sadly) I
am still none the wiser about why everyone goes mad for watching men hit balls
with a large bat like this.
★★★★
★★★★
