Israeli baseball: A surprising hit

• Author: SHLOMO MAITAL
• Published date: 13 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Baseball is a very slow game; in 2006 it took almost five hours for the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees to play a nine-inning game. A perfect game in baseball is one where no batter for one team ever reaches first base – in other words, where for three hours or more nothing happens. For impatient Israelis, who seek action, baseball is Nembutol – it puts you to sleep.

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That is why the recent miraculous wins of the Israeli national baseball team are so astonishing. For instance, in the recent Tokyo Olympics, where the Israeli team defied all odds by qualifying – one of only six countries worldwide to do so – and then, finishing a respectable fifth. Or this year's European baseball championships, in Turin, Italy, where a depleted Israeli team again worked miracles and reached the finals against a powerful Netherlands squad, led 4-1 – and lost 9-4 to the Dutch only after running out of pitching.

Here is the story of Israel's national baseball squad, told brilliantly by Joel Shupack and the Israel Story podcast [full disclosure: my son Yochai is a producer and co-founder].

Act I: The Jamaican bobsled team?

"We've been compared to the Jamaican bobsled team," said Eric Holtz, about the Israeli national team. "I love it!"

In the 1988 winter Olympics, Jamaica's bobsled team debuted, improbably, and crashed on its final run, failing to finish. Yes, there are a few snowflakes atop Jamaica's Blue Mountain…but not much bobsledding.

But Israeli baseball? It's a different story.

In late 2016, Peter Kurz, President of the Israel Association of Baseball met with Holtz, who had coached the US baseball team at the Maccabiah games. Kurz offered Holtz the job of building Israel's national team, intimating Israel could possibly be one of six Olympic qualifiers.

Holtz owns a baseball training camp near New York City. He was skeptical. Israel had not qualified for any Olympic summer games team sport of any kind since 1976. And Israeli baseball? Who plays baseball in Israel?

Holtz took the job. And Kurz and helpers began to assemble a team. But how?

The national team's veteran right-handed pitcher Shlomo Lipetz told Shupack about a Little League match that he played in, against Saudi Arabia in 1989. It was at the US military base in Ramstein, Germany (where thousands of Afghan refugees were flown recently). Israel lost 41-0. Later, the Saudis, embarrassed by press reports of having played an Israeli team, for them a no-no, denied the game ever happened.

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