arts & entertainment

The National Pastime

Meet Major League Baseball's
new official h torian.

Jewish former
All-Star shares
secrets of his
success.

Major League = ase all's new official historian,

"I'm very grateful to all the Jewish

communities throughout this country and

Canada who have taken me in and been

supportive throughout my career."

— Shawn Green

Suzanne Chessler
Contributing Writer

S

hawn Green won't be attend-
ing this year's Major League
Baseball All-Star Game, but he
has been attending to a memoir that
describes what made him a player in
two earlier All-Star appearances.
Green, with Gordon McAlpine, has
written The Way of Baseball: Finding
Stillness at 95 MPH (Simon & Schuster;
$24). The book explains how Eastern
philosophies and practices, without
displacing his commitment to Judaism,
became important to his success both
at and away from the diamond.
This year's MLB All-Star competi-
tion, the 82nd, will be broadcast 8 p.m.
Tuesday, July 12, on FOX, triggering
special memories for the athlete-author.
Phoenix, where the game is set, pro-
vided defining moments for the book.
"The All-Star Game is a great event
for fans, and I love to see the players
who haven't been there before says
Green, 38, retired from the sport since
2007 and discussing past and upcom-
ing ventures in a phone conversation
from his California home.

"The game is a whirlwind, especially
the first time players go. I know what
they'll be going through, and I'm sure
they'll be having the time of their lives:'
Green, who had a 14-year career and
was known for tossing balls with kids
in the stands, played for the Toronto
Blue Jays, Los Angeles Dodgers, Arizona
Diamondbacks and the New York Mets.
His stats highlight 328 home runs,
1,071 RBIs and a .282 career batting
average; and his recognition includes
the American League Gold Glove Award
and Silver Slugger Award.
Green, a formidable adversary in
Tiger home games, links his suc-
cesses to being in the moment with-
out distraction. With ideas from Zen
Buddhism and the Chinese philoso-
phy of qigong, he took a meditative
approach to baseball and decided to
share that with fans.
"I always liked to write, and I kept a
journal with my philosophy on life and
how baseball fit into that:' says Green,
sure that repetition and routine made
him sharper, more aware and better
able to concentrate on each swing.
"When I was done playing and
looked back on my career, I thought

Meditating on page 33

George Robinson
Special to the Jewish News

ohn Thorn had a busy spring.
His latest book, Baseball in
the Garden of Eden: The Secret
History of the Early Game (Simon and
Schuster), was published, and he was
named official historian of Major League
Baseball. Which is not bad for a nice
Jewish boy who was born in a displaced
persons camp in Stuttgart, Germany.
Thorn, 64, offered some insights into
baseball and the Jewish-American expe-
rience in a telephone interview.

j

Q: How do you get from a DP camp to
being a baseball historian, let alone
the official one?
A: I was born in the American sector
of occupied Germany, but it's a little odd
to say I was born in Germany because
I was never a German. I was a stateless
person. My parents were both Polish
Jews. My father was working as a transla-
tor for HIAS in Stuttgart. He had been in
the University of Geneva's dental school
when the war broke out; he went back to
Poland because his [then-] girlfriend, my
mother, was there. He must have been
one of the only Jews going in that direc-
tion in 1939. They moved to America
shortly after I was born. We lived in the
Bronx and then in 1954 moved to Kew
Gardens.

Q: What drew you to baseball?
A: I believe that part of the attraction
of baseball was it was something on
which neither of my parents could give
advice. Seriously, though, at first it was

horn

more the baseball cards than the game.
At 21/2, I spoke German reasonably well
and a little Polish. But at nursery school,
I was tormented by my classmates; and
one day I came home and told my par-
ents I would no longer respond to any-
thing but English. I taught myself to read
from the backs of cereal boxes and the
backs of those magical cards that came
with bubble gum. That was my ticket to
being an American.

Q: In that respect, your path is pretty
typical. Why has baseball been such a
vehicle for Jews and other immigrants
to acculturate in America?
A: Baseball is called the "National
Pastime" for a reason. It's the game with
which new Americans identify, to which
they attach their hopes and dreams; it
provides an escape from the routine and
makes you feel American. If you're an
outsider, baseball appears to be a game
in which there are no restrictions in size
or weight or religion or color. For some-
one born in the United States, it's not
easy to understand how much baseball
can make you feel like "one of the guys,"
but it can. And for a writer, baseball is a
wonderful prism through which you can
look at other aspects of American life.
It was amazing to me to learn that
Jackie Robinson set foot on a Major
League baseball field for the first time
two days before I was born. I became
attached to Robinson very strongly. Jews
tend to go with the underdog for obvious
historical reasons, and Robinson seemed
to me a real hero. He was hated for no
good reason but his race, and Jews know
something about that.

Pastime on page 37

July 7 • 2011

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