Entert

arts

:lent

Lipman Pike:
America's First
Home-Run King

Play Ball!

Two new books - one for adults, the other for
children - examine Jewish baseball heroes.

Gail Zimmerman

view of history, Hank Greenberg was
a man who stood against not only
anti-Semitism but also racism and
bigotry in general, and did so with
remarkable grace. His refusal to ever
use prejudice as an excuse, and his
ability to always keep his dignity,
stands as an important chapter in
the fight against bigotry
in America, one that can
inspire not only Jews but
all victims of hatred and
discrimination.

Arts & Entertainment Editor

W

ith the Detroit Tigers'
opening day just
days away, it is fitting
that a new book about one of the
team's all-time greats has just been
released.
Hank Greenberg:
The Hero Who Did
Not Want to Be One
(Yale University
Press; $25) is the
Q: How much of his
latest in a series of
decision not to play ball
interpretive biog-
on Yom Kippur, 1934,
raphies in YUP's
was informed by reli-
Jewish Lives Series,
ous faith?
which looks at the
A: He had no religious
Jewish experience
Hank Greenberg
faith,
was completely
from antiquity to
44,,
secular.
When his team
the present.
MARK KURLANSKY
needed him in a tight
Here, New York
pennant race, on Rosh
Times bestsell-
Hashanah, he played.
ing author Mark
Kurlanslcy, exploring the truth behind But by Yom Kippur the pennant was
secure, and since many Jews had been
the legend, answers questions about
upset about Rosh Hashanah and it
a man of "immense dignity and
restraint who never wanted to defined was an embarrassment for his family,
he decided not to play. The following
by his Jewishness and sometimes
year on Yom Kippur he was in a World
struggled with his role as a Jewish
Series and his team needed him, and
hero."
he agreed to play without hesitation.
But a wrist injury the day before
Q: Why does Hank Greenberg
prevented him from participating,
remain so important in American
thereby securing the myth that "Hank
Jewish history?
Greenberg won't play on the High
A: In the 1930s, at a time when
Holidays." It never came up again.
there was so much anti-Semitism
in America that Jews hesitated to be
Q: Was Hank Greenberg always
too conspicuous, here was a Jewish
uncomfortable with the idea of
superstar who seemed fearless, who
being a hero to American Jews?
faced relentless anti-Semitism and
A: Yes, he was very uncomfortable
never backed away. But in the longer

Fi‘t

•

• •

about it. Jews were constantly try-
ing to honor him at banquets and
give him gifts, and he turned both
down, saying he just wanted to be a
ballplayer. He never wanted to deny
being Jewish but did not believe that
it should give him special standing.

Q: How much did Detroit figure
into his experience and legend?
A: Had he played in New York, his
story might have been different. But
he was in Detroit, a city with a small,
tightly knit Jewish community and
a general public with a great deal of
ant-Semitic feeling. In the years he
was playing, two of the most notori-
ous anti-Semites in the country,
Father Coughlin and Henry Ford,
were both spewing hate in Detroit.

„

Q: What qualities defined him as
an athlete?
A: Though his swing was unbe-
lievable graceful, he was never
considered a natural athlete. He was
large, a bit awkward and flat-footed.
But he was also extremely powerful
and possibly the most hardworking
player in the history of professional
baseball. He spent hours, before and
after games, practicing his swing
and his fielding moves. Whatever his
performance was lacking he worked
on that particular move until he had
it down. And in an age when other
players like Babe Ruth were out
carousing, he kept himself in tip-top
physical condition year round.

Q: What qualities most defined
him as a man?
A: His humility, without a doubt.

C

hildren were hitting,
throwing and catch-
ing balls well before
the official game of baseball
was developed, but in 1845
(the year Lipman Pike was
born), a committee from the
New York Knickerbockers
Base Ball Club drew up a set of rules that helped change a
child's game into a sport played by adults. Other clubs soon
formed their own teams, and, in 1858, the year of Lip's bar
mitzvah, the National Association of Base Ball Players (with
16 New York teams) was formed."
So writes author Richard Michelson in his Author's Note
describing the history behind his children's book Lipman
Pike: America's First Home Run King (Sleeping Bear Press;
$16.95). Recommended for kids ages 6 to 10, the book is
vividly illustrated by Zachary Pullen.
"As baseball became America's most popular pastime,
spectators began to be charged to watch a 'match' (game) and
`captains' (managers), hoping to give their team an advantage
and draw more 'cranks' (fans), began to secretly pay some of
the better players, even though baseball was a game of 'ama-
teurs' and it was against the rules': Michelson explains.
While there is no way of knowing for sure which player
was the first to be paid, in 1866, 21-year-old Lipman Emanuel
"Lip" Pike (nickname "the Iron Batter") accepted $20 a week
to move from Brooklyn to Philadelphia to join the Athletics.
He was brought up before the NABBP governing board, but
the charges were dropped (most likely because other players
were being paid as well).
But Lip became known as the first professional baseball
player.
Within two years, the rules were changed, writes Michelson,
and players were permitted to accept money, leading to the
formation of the first all-professional league in 1871.
Lip later played for several other teams, including the
Baltimore Canaries, the St. Louis Browns and the Cincinnati
Reds. With legendary power and speed, he was known not
only as the first Jewish professional baseball player but base-
ball's first Jewish manager and Amerids first home run king.
He retired from baseball in 1881 and ran a haberdashery
in his hometown of Brooklyn. This book charmingly tells
Lip's story — from childhood (his parents were Dutch
immigrant shop owners) until his death at age 48 of heart
disease. II

-

Jews

igow
4.11 I Nate Bloom

Special to the Jewish News

um

Film Notes

Win Win, opening Friday, April 1, in
Detroit, has received outstanding
reviews. From director Tom McCarthy
(The Visitor, The Station Agent), the film
stars Paul Giamatti as Mike Flaherty,
a struggling lawyer who volunteers
as an assistant high school wrestling
coach. He takes on the guardianship of a
wealthy elderly client (Burt Young) and
improperly puts him in a nursing home.
Things get complicated when the cli-
ent's troubled teen grandson (newcomer

52

March 31 2011

Alex Sheffer) shows up at his grandfa-
ther's house looking for a place to live.
Flaherty takes him into his home and
finds out that the grandson is a great
wrestler. Things get even more compli-
cated when the grandson's drug-addled
mother comes to town.
Jeffrey
Tambor (Arrested
Development), who
has a master's degree
in acting from Wayne
State University, has a
big supporting part as
the
head coach of the
Jeffrey
wrestling
squad and
Tambor

also Flaherty's friend.
Source Code, also opening April 1,
stars Jake Gyllenhaal, 30, as Army
Captain Colter Stevens, who finds
himself part of a high tech experi-
ment to halt a suspected coming ter-
rorist attack. The "source code" will
allow him to enter into the memory
of a person killed in a previous bomb-
ing, suspected to be from the same
unknown person or group, and relive,
over and over, the last 8 minutes of
the victim's life to gather clues about
the terrorist(s) who did it.
Co-stars include Michelle Monaghan
and Vera Farmiga.

Joe Rossi Returns

TV Land cable has placed on its summer
schedule a new sitcom starring Fran
Drescher, 57. Actor Robert Walden, 69,
has been cast to play Drescher's father.
Walden has mostly been an acting
coach and has rarely appeared on TV
since the end of the
Lou Grant TV series
in 1984. Born Robert
Wolkowitz, he played
Joe Rossi, the hot dog
investigative reporter
for the newspaper
edited by Lou Grant (Ed
Robert Walden Asner). 1_1