Heavy Hitting Yids
Sandy Koufax fans, rejoice: A new set of baseball cards celebrates the Jews who played a role in America’s Favorite Pastime
By Karen Pearlman

In the 1980 movie “Airplane,” created by the brilliant and zany Jewish triumvirate of Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker and David Zucker, there’s a memorable scene of a flight attendant named Elaine asking one of the passengers if he would like something to read on the plane.

The passenger says, “Do you have anything light?”

Elaine replies, “How about this leaflet? Famous Jewish Sports Legends.”

Obviously dripping in sarcasm, that snarky reply may have some basis in truth. But not entirely.

While Jews certainly haven’t made up the majority of the world’s top sports figures, there have been more than a few high-profile athletes (see Olympians Mark Spitz for swimming, Sarah and Emily Hughes for figure skating, Deena Kastor for long-distance running, plus boxer Dmitry Salita and pro football Hall of Fame member and former San Diego Chargers standout Ron Mix).

It is America’s Favorite Pastime, though, Major League Baseball, that seems to have attracted the most Jews – the estimate stands at 150 heavy-hitting Yids.

Most sports fans know of MLB Hall of Famers Sandy Koufax, the hard-throwing left-handed pitcher and slugger extraordinaire Hank Greenberg, two of the most celebrated baseball players of all time. But for Martin Abramowitz, an uninhibited Boston Red Sox fan and the vice president of planning and agency relations at Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Massachusetts, the obvious wasn’t enough.

Spurred on in the late 1990s by his young sports-loving son, Jacob, now 18, Abramowitz took more than just a passing interest in looking into Jewish major league baseball players of the common era.

“Starting in 1997, I was thinking about buying baseball cards with Jewish players,” said Abramowitz, who then started becoming serious about collecting all the cards of Jewish major leaguers, past and present. “In 1997, ’98 and ’99, Jacob was buying sports cards at card shows and while he was wandering around looking for Ken Griffey Jr. and Michael Jordan, I was looking for ‘cousin Hank’ (Greenberg).”

Abramowitz said that in 1999, he was bemoaning the fact that at the time there were 100 baseball cards with Jewish players and that he had only 97 of them. As it turns out, there were even more players than he had originally thought, and thus more cards Abramowitz was without. And as with most collectors who are oh-so-close to having the whole shebang but who come up short, the cards Abramowitz was missing were the source of some sheer frustration.

Sensing that, young Jacob, 11 at the time, came up with one answer to his dad’s plight.

“Jacob said, ‘Dad, make your own set,’ “ Abramowitz said.

“I figured I’ll never be able to pull this off, but it was something to do with Jacob and I figured I could teach him something about persistence and maybe even accepting disappointment,” Abramowitz said.

The disappointment never set in.

Researching newspaper archives and reaching out to various baseball-savvy people, getting facts and garnering photos over the next few years resulted in a set of 142 baseball cards printed in 2003 called “Jewish Major Leaguers,” sold by the American Jewish Historical Society.

The cards include not only Koufax and Greenberg but also every other Jewish major leaguer Abramowitz knew of at the time, such as four-time All-Star catcher Harry Danning, third baseman and one-time American League MVP Al Rosen, and outfielder Sid Gordon.

Other former players featured are long-time Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Steve Yeager, pitcher/announcer Steve Stone and the brother duo of Norm and Larry Sherry.

During the almost five initial years as a Jewish baseball player and Jewish baseball card detective, Abramowitz even traveled to Chicago to meet with George Brace, a photographer who took official photos of every major leaguer who played for or against the Chicago Cubs of the National League and the Chicago White Sox of the AL from the 1920s through the early 1990s.

At the Chicago home of a then-ailing Brace, Abramowitz said Brace’s daughter, Mary, was able to unearth some classic photos of otherwise unavailable Jewish ballplayers that Abramowitz was able to have turned into baseball cards. Though he was able to cull information and pictures from other places, often through the families of deceased players, it was through the connection with the late Brace that Abramowitz was able to get a majority of his most sought-after Jewish big leaguers – and was then able let go of any frustration as he envisioned his baseball card set finally being completed.

Last year, Abramowitz worked with the Upper Deck card company in Carlsbad to come up with an additional set of 55 cards. Licensed by Major League Baseball Properties and the Major League Baseball Players Assocation, the updated set includes six new Jewish ballplayers who made it to the major leagues since 2003 such as former San Diego Padres southpaw Craig Breslow and Arcadia, Calif.-native John Grabow.

The new set also includes some “discoveries” of retired baseball-playing Jews like the late Lou Boudreau (who used to denounce his Judaism) and Dominican-born Jose Bautista, some baseball “pioneers” like broadcaster Mel Allen and labor leaders Marvin Miller and Donald Fehr, and even a handful of women who played in a professional girls’ baseball league.

While he is passionate about baseball, Abramowitz, currently working on a book, “Playing America’s Game,” has been considering putting out a new set of cards with the AJHS featuring Jewish athletes and sports figures from other sports.

He realizes the athletes who have donned National Basketball Association and National Football League uniforms won’t be as easy to find or as high in number as they are for MLB players, but there are always people like New York Knicks basketball coach Larry Brown and former Chargers owner Gene Klein, who if he were alive would kvell over Chargers defensive tackle Igor Olshansky. There are even some current National Hockey League players who are Jewish like Detroit Red Wings defenseman Mathieu Schneider and Washington Capitals forward Jeff Halpern

“We’ll call them ‘Hebrew Heroes,’” Abramowitz said.

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