I am not typically late for things. Except, one morning in March of last year, I was running late to a doctor’s appointment for my wife and me. She was already there, having let me sleep in since I had been up late the night before. Not for work or anything. But to watch Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic.
Why would a Catholic kid from Cleveland care about Jewish baseball so much (and more important, why would his wife tolerate the “so much” part)? Answer: Because it was baseball, in the “can you believe this is happening?” sense of it. As an American, I obviously was pulling for Team USA going into the WBC. (Spoiler: We won.) But the qualification of Team Israel into the field of 16 teams was a bit of a surprise. The success it ended up having in the competition—winners of its first four games as huge underdogs, only bowing out the day I arrived tardy at the doctor’s office only to discover my wife would be having twins—was completely shocking.
Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or perhaps I had been accustomed to surprises from the late nights watching 3 a.m. baseball, but as I was handed the sonogram, I took off my Team Israel hat and muttered “Oh, shit!”
Team Israel’s run had just ended, and mine had just begun. The late nights would continue, but not for baseball. (OK, maybe some baseball.)
Baseball in Israel, you see, is … not a thing. Sure, there are American Jews in Israel or Israelis with family in the United States who like baseball. But the game has not exactly thrived there. To understand Team Israel, you have to think back to Moneyball, with Billy Beane and his roster of overlooked, overachieving Oakland Athletics. In a nod to the movie version, Team Israel infielder Cody Decker calls the team “an island of misfit toys,” in the wonderful new documentary Heading Home: the tale of Team Israel. The serious, yet often quite funny, film highlights not only the historic run, but the ragtag cast of unlikely baseball boosters who made it all happen.
To field a team, Israel had to look outside Israel—mainly in the United States—and make the most of the WBC’s flexible eligibility standards. With a draft board out of an amateur fantasy football night, the documentary shows assistant general manager Margo Sugarman and GM Peter Kurz talking with staff about recruiting players who can comply with MLB’s “heritage rule”—which is to say that the player, his parents, grandparents, or spouse are Jewish, and thus can lay claim to being Israeli. As a result, virtually all of the team’s WBC roster came from the U.S., mainly minor-league journeymen, or retired or near-major league stars. (One such player was found because a tipster informed Kurz that the player’s mother “looked Jewish” and was from New York. He was right.)
If you think the heritage rule is cheating, consider Spain or the Netherlands, who, like Israel, get most of their players with the help of the rule. And keep in mind this is less about pure nationality than it is promotion of baseball.
Also, consider Israel’s population. It’s basically the same as Virginia’s, and they have zero MLB-quality ballparks. In fact, throughout the country there are only a handful of ballparks. Fairfax County, where I live, has probably five times as many ballparks as does Israel. Not exactly the fertile ground for a homegrown team, yet.
After the team qualified for the WBC, a number of American players went on what I’d assume is akin to a “birthright” trip to Israel. Very few of them were raised as practicing Jews, and this was an opportunity to see their heritage. A local paper joked: “Team Israel’s Baseball Stars Finally Get to See Something New: Israel.” And while the local baseball faithful showed up to meet a bunch of American baseball players on their trip, one kid asks, “Why you come here to Israel, and not stay in America?” Former New York Mets first baseman Ike Davis responds in jest, “Did you want us to leave?”
“That’s what is great about Israel, is the fact that you have Jewish family and you have Jewish blood from around the, you know, the globe,” Davis continues, this time more seriously. “You can feel like when you get here, you can actually feel like it’s a little bit like home. And I think that that’s what we’re here for this week, to find that.”
They also found victories. Israel went undefeated in pool play, defeating Korea, Taiwan, and the Netherlands: all ranked in the top 10 worldwide. In game four, Israel defeated Cuba.
A Cuban “journalist” wearing all of Team Cuba’s garb asks Team Israel manager Jerry Weinstein whether they were really America’s JV team. Weinstein denies the charge on camera, telling the documentarians ,“It’s B.S. You lost to Israel, brother.”
The win against Cuba was the end of Israel’s big streak, as the team lost to the Netherlands and then Japan to exit the tournament. Still, it was a great run, good for baseball in Israel and good for Israel abroad. One question I have is whether their mascot, the Mensch on the Bench, of SharkTank fame, will endure.
“He’s a mascot, he’s a friend, he’s a teammate, he’s a borderline deity to our team … He brings a lot to the table,” says Decker in an Andy Kaufmanesque press conference. “Every team needs their Jobu. He was ours. He had his own locker, and we even gave him offerings: Manischewitz, gelt, and gefilte fish …He is everywhere and nowhere all at once. His actual location is irrelevant because he exists in higher metaphysical planes. But he’s always near.”
Hopefully, he’ll be near the next time in 2021, when my girls can watch.
The documentary film Heading Home is currently screening in select cities across America, and is expected to be available for home streaming soon. It will be screened in Washington at the Washington Jewish Film Festival in May of 2018.
