Israel Baseball Makes History — and Makes a Grizzled Sportswriter a Fan Again
Israel Baseball celebrates their win over South Africa. Image by Margo Sugarman/Israel Baseball
When I heard that Israel’s national baseball team would play its final Olympic qualifying game on Sunday at noon in Parma, Italy, I did the quick math from my hotel room in Scottsdale, Ariz., where I’m currently covering baseball for MLB.com.
Noon in Italy meant 3 a.m. here. So I set my alarm for 2:45 and got the live stream ready on the laptop fired before the first pitch.
All week long, I had tuned in to Israel’s qualifying games before heading to the ballpark to do my regular job. And I found myself yelling at my screen and actively joining the Jewish baseball fans on the YouTube chat feed cheering on improbable wins against the Netherlands and Italy and worrying after a loss to the Czech Republic.
Fan. That’s definitely not a word I’ve used to describe myself in a very long time.
As a veteran baseball writer with more than 20 years at MLB.com, my love for the game hasn’t dissipated. But it’s an occupational hazard that your emotional investment in one team or another disappears the longer you cover a sport. Now here I was in the middle of the night joyously watching Israel qualify for the Olympics with an 11-1 romp over South Africa. How on Earth did I get here?
It started back in 2017, when I traveled to Israel with a group of Jewish American baseball players who had agreed to represent the country in the World Baseball Classic. I was working on a documentary called “Heading Home” about that trip and the surprising success Team Israel had in the tournament. Over the last year and a half, I have traveled across the United States screening the film at festivals, cinemas and community events, one of the joys of my professional life.
I’ve stayed in contact with many of the players from that 2017 team, some of whom I watched in the wee hours from my hotel room piling on one another after Team Israel beat South Africa. They’re the ones now headed to Tokyo in July 2020 for what will be the first appearance by Israel in any Olympic team sport since 1976, when Israel’s soccer players made it to Mexico City.
Which brings us to two questions on a lot of people’s minds..
Baseball in the Olympics? It’s true. It’s coming back to the Summer Games for the first time since 2008, thanks in part to the sport’s popularity in the host country. Japan and Israel are the first of six teams to qualify; the United States will compete in a qualifying tournament in November.
Israelis play baseball? The same question arose in 2017. And the answer is that there are Israelis who play, but the team is propelled by American players who are at least nominally Jewish and have various degrees of collegiate or professional experience, or both.
For the World Baseball Classic, all they needed was proof of one Jewish grandparent. But for the Olympics, players have to actually be citizens of the country they are playing for; 19 of the American Jewish players became dual citizens of Israel in order to compete. Armed with their new passports, they played qualifying games over the past few months in Bulgaria, Germany and then Italy, along with one American-Israeli and four sabras, including pitcher Shlomo Lipetz, who recorded the final out against South Africa.
My connection to this team, of course, does not require an Israeli passport. I am simply a progressive Jew who loves baseball — and Israel. Not the Israeli government in its current form, but what Israel aspires to be. I went on Young Judaea’s “year course” before I went to college 30 years ago, and my sister and her family live on Kibbutz Lotan in the Arava. Seeing Israel spelled out on jerseys, in a pure way on a baseball field, really spoke to me. I have little doubt that those of us cheering on Team Israel represent a pretty wide political spectrum, but the fact that we can join together to root for this team surely speaks for itself.
I should mention, too, that I live in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, around the corner from the Tree of Life synagogue. As we draw close to the one-year anniversary of the shootings, the ability to openly and loudly celebrate being Jewish is something that has a profound effect on me. At those screenings of “Heading Home,” the audiences seemed to be feeling a similar kind of pride.
It’s an act of defiance, really, a display of strength to those who still wish us harm. A group of American Jewish baseball players, many of whom did not previously have strong ties to their Jewish identity, have willingly and very publicly embraced it by wearing Israel across their chest. In 2017, these players startled everyone by beating heavily favored teams like South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Cuba and nearly making it to the semifinals of the tournament. Now, they have battled their way to Tokyo, this time as Israeli citizens.
“I wasn’t raised religious, nor was I raised with strong Jewish values or roots,” said Blake Gailen, a minor leaguer in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization who played for both the World Baseball Classic team and the Olympic qualifying squad. “I knew I had Jewish blood, but that was kind of the extent of it.”
Since 2017, he said, “ I have slowly become more and more engulfed into the heritage and the culture.” “Whether it’s a baseball pride thing, a national pride thing, a religious tie, or a combination of everything, to say this is special would be an understatement,” he continued. “I don’t remember ever crying from joy on a baseball field and that happened on Sunday.”
That’s what got me up before sunrise on Sunday. And why I’m already scheming to get to Tokyo next summer. They say sequels aren’t typically as good, but “Heading Home 2” has a really nice ring to it.
Jonathan Mayo covers baseball for MLB.com. He was a producer and appeared in the documentary “Heading Home” about Israel baseball’s Cinderella run at the 2017 World Baseball Classic. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanMayo.
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