Bits and pieces

A few items of special interest to the Jewish fans out there.

Mark Kurlansky, author of the upcoming book Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One, was the subject of this profile in the New York Jewish Week. From the article, by Eric Herschthal:

In March, Yale University Press will publish his short biography of the baseball Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg, part of the publishing house’s “Jewish Lives” series. The editors of the series asked Kurlansky if there were any Jews in particular that he’d like to write about. He gave them a long list, with Sandy Koufax at the top.

“They said, ‘Well, How about Hank Greenberg?'” Kurlansky said.

Kurlansky was skittish at first. Greenberg was from his parents’ generation, a Depression-era slugger that many Jews loved, but who actually shunned the attention. Koufax, on the other hand, was someone Kurlansky could relate to: a postwar secular Jew who was nonetheless proudly, even defiantly Jewish. Famously, he made headlines for refusing to pitch in the World Series because it was Yom Kippur.

“Greenberg was before my time,” Kurlansky said, “but I realized that he was a much more interesting figure.”

After doing research, Kurlansky was surprised that Greenberg was willing to admit he was Jewish during the time he played. In the 1930s, when Greenberg’s career began, many Jewish celebrities were changing their names or downplaying their Jewish identity in order to succeed in the American mainstream.

But Greenberg “was saying he was Jewish in the 1930s, perhaps the most anti-Semitic period in American history,” Kurlansky said.

“For that he became a symbol for Jews, [even though] it was contrary to who he was.”

I just received a copy of My Time with the Catcher Spy, Morris Moe Berg, by artist Neil J. Farkas. It’s a very quirky book, consisting mostly of a photocopies of pages from a small memo boiok that belonged to the iconic athlete , ostensibly notes for a baseball book Berg was going to write. Fortunately, the editor supplements the penmanship challenge with a typed version.
Speaking of Berg, baseball artist Graig Kreindler just “released” a handsome portrait of the Jewish enigma. There are also a couple of Sandy Koufax paintings to view on the site. Sorry, but they’ve already been sold. Here’s a piece I did about Kreindler from a few years ago.