Sad news everybody: Chicago Cubs president Theo Epstein isn’t planning to run for president of the United States in 2020. You’d think if anybody had the power to make America great again, it would be the man who broke the two longest-lasting curses in baseball and maybe in all of professional sports; the man who…
We Americans do not much trust our politicians, but we still like our sportsmen. And we even love, apparently, the men who lead our sports franchises, like Theo Epstein, the Jewish president of the Chicago Cubs. This year, Epstein is at the head of Fortune’s list of “Great Leaders,” winning praise for his role in…
A certain generation of Midwestern Jewish boys will always have a special attachment to Ken Holtzman. Though his near-contemporary and fellow southpaw Sandy Koufax had the more dazzling career—and pitched his perfect game against the Cubs—it was Holtzman who had the most victories of any Jewish pitcher (174) in Major League Baseball history. Besides, Koufax…
A certain generation of Midwestern Jewish boys will always have a special attachment Ken Holtzman. Though his near-contemporary and fellow southpaw Sandy Koufax had the more dazzling career—and pitched his perfect game against the Cubs—it was Holtzman who had the most victories of any Jewish pitcher (174) in Major League Baseball history. Besides, Koufax was…
After 70 seasons, the Chicago Cubs’ World Series appearance seems almost too improbable to believe; especially given the team’s long tradition of dramatic late-season collapses. But now that the team is actually favored to win the series against the Cleveland Indians—their first-game rout notwithstanding—it’s no surprise that fans are beginning to think of supernatural forces….
Last weekend Rachel Bloom made us laugh, cry and sing with the season premier of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” Ewan McGregor gave us a film adaptation of “American Pastoral” that the Forward’s Adam Langer found disappointing (sorry), and we swooned, again, for Leonard Cohen. What’s grabbing our attention this week? Holocaust denial, more Philip Roth, and the…
A few hours after the Kol Nidre service that marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, 11:07 p.m. Chicago time, my phone buzzed. My iPhone was on for emergencies: with the kid away in college and my 91 year old mom alone in her apartment, I had to check. The message spelled “W-O-W.” “Dad, Cubs had…
It’s like the beginning of a Jewish joke: A young boy obsessed with the statistics in “The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract,” and with creating rosters on the old Apple II computer game MicroLeague Baseball, grows up to become the general manager of not one but two major league baseball teams. And of course they…
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