Arts & Entertainment
Love Story
Film portrays contributions of Jewish Major Leaguers
and the meaning of baseball in the lives of American Jews.
As first baseman for
Michael Fox
the Detroit Tigers,
Special to the Jewish News
Hank Greenberg
was the first Jewish
0
n his way to becoming a peren-
nial All-Star in the mid-1950s,
Cleveland Indians clean-up hitter
Al Rosen received more than his share
of barbs from opposing dugouts and the
stands.
All these years later, the slugging Jewish
third-baseman recalls how he distinguished
casual insults from malicious slurs.
"There's a line where you can accept it
because you know it's not right, but it's not
that offensive," he says. "It's the moment it
becomes offensive that you make a deci-
sion — and I'm sure there's not a lot of
forethought to this — but the decision is,
`I'm going to stop this right now because if
I don't it's going to go on and on and on:"
Rosen makes a memorable appear-
ance in Jews and Baseball: An American
Love Story, Peter Miller's entertaining and
unexpectedly thoughtful documentary
about the relationship between the nation-
al pastime, an immigrant population and
their assimilated sons and daughters.
Jews and Baseball, which boasts a first-
rate narration written by New York Times
sportswriter Ira Berkow and read by
Dustin Hoffman, and an ultra-rare inter-
view with Sandy Koufax, screens Saturday
and Sunday, Jan. 29-30, at the Detroit Film
Theatre in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Rosen wasn't raised with any formal
training in Judaism, he said in an inter-
view during the San Francisco Jewish Film
Festival last summer, but he knew who he
was.
Actually, growing up in the 1930s in
a lower-middle-class neighborhood in
Miami (where Little Havana is today) with
no other Jews, there was always some kid
to remind him.
"You're picked on, you're made fun of,
you're the butt of jokes; and unless you
assert yourself soon and often you soon
become cast aside Rosen says. "Well, I
was never one to be cast aside."
That's not false bravado. Even at 86, the
wiry Rosen gives off the vibe of a man
who won't be pushed around.
As he describes his adolescence, it's
easy to see why he wasn't hesitant to use
his fists to silence an anti-Semite in the
minors or even after he reached the Big
baseball superstar.
Sandy Koufax's
decision not to pitch
Game 1 of the 1965
World Series on Yom
Kippur received
national attention.
Above: Considered one of the best all-time Jewish players to have played the
game, Al Rosen was a four-time All-Star selection between 1952-1955 and was
unanimously voted the American League's Most Valuable Player in 1953.
American pop culture
historian Peter
Levine taught in the
history department
at Michigan State
University from 1969-
2000.
American sportswriter
Maury Allen is a
cousin, by marriage,
of Harry Eisenstat,
a Jewish Tigers
pitcher best known for
defeating Bob Feller in
a 1938 game in which
Above: Top-notch defensive player Elliott Maddox made
his Major League debut with the Detroit Tigers in 1970
Feller set a record by
striking out 18 batters.
and converted to Judaism in 1974 while a member of
the Yankees.
Leagues in 1947.
"Some kids are bigger than others, and
they want to be bullies," he notes. "And
sometimes you have to know that you're
not going to win, but you have to take on
the bully. That's what happened more than
once in my growing up in the southwest
section of Miami."
Rosen came within one hit of the elusive
batting Triple Crown in 1953 and garnered
the American League MVP award in a
unanimous vote. But bothered by inju-
ries and livid at the way Indians General
Manager (and Tigers legend) Hank
Greenberg treated him — cutting his sal-
ary after the 1954 season and trading him
to Boston after the '56 campaign — Rosen
retired at the age of 32 rather than start
over in a new city.
Jews and Baseball suggests that
Greenberg was tougher on Rosen, a mem-
ber of the tribe, than he was on any other
Tribe (Cleveland) player.
When I bring up his predecessor's
name, Rosen only says, "Greenberg and I
were not friendly."
The film's poster
He does credit Greenberg with being
the first great Jewish ballplayer and for
inspiring other Jews to enter the game. But
Rosen attributes the decline in overt anti-
Semitism to the establishment of the State
of Israel in 1948.
"Once the Jew began to fight, people
realized the Jews were not just shopkeep-
ers, nor were they just accountants or
doctors or lawyers or musicians," Rosen
declares.
"I think there was a metamorphosis that
took place. All of us who were in [public]
life benefited from that."
Speaking of fighting, Rosen was long-
time teammates with Larry Doby, who
broke the color barrier in the American
League two months before Rosen was
called up.
"I don't know that Doby was of any
help to me as a Jew or I was any help to
Doby as a black man:' Rosen says, before
recounting an incident in Texas involving
a cabbie who refused to drive the black
player.
"I got out of the cab and told him he
was going to take us, and he said, 'No, I'm
not'; and I grabbed him and punched
him:' Rosen says. "I think that sort of
resolved Doby's feelings about how I felt
about him."
Rosen returned to baseball in the late
1970s as president of the Yankees after
his old friend, George Steinbrenner,
bought the team. Rosen was also a suc-
cessful GM with the Houston Astros and
San Francisco Giants, and he continues
to follow the game and hold strong, well-
considered opinions.
If one word could be used to describe Al
Rosen, it would be character.
"I wore my feelings on my sleeves:' he
confides. "I always felt that I want to con-
duct myself that, if I were walking down
the street, one Jew could look at another
Jew and say, 'He's a mentsh.' That was sort
of ingrained in me."
Jews and Baseball: An American Love
Story screens 4 p.m. Saturday and
2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29-30, at the
Detroit Film Theatre in the Detroit
Institute of Arts. $6.50-$7.50.
(313) 833-4005; tickets@dia.org .
January 27 » 2011
•
39