cooperstown, n.y. | Sandy Koufax isn’t the only major league baseball player who refused to pitch on Yom Kippur.
It was the fall of 1963, and Larry Yellen was slated to make his major league debut for the Houston Colt .45s against the New York Mets when he received a call from his mother.
“Larry,” Yellen remembers his mother saying. “I read about it in the paper. You’re embarrassing us. It’s Yom Kippur.”
Respecting his mother’s wishes, Yellen told his general manager that he couldn’t pitch and sat out the game.
His story hasn’t received much publicity, most likely because his major league career was short: He only pitched in 14 big league games before his career ended in 1964.
But the cloud of obscurity surrounding Yellen and other Jewish players is beginning to clear. It was helped immensely by a historic two-day event at Baseball’s Hall of Fame in upstate New York Aug. 28 and 29, which shined the spotlight on professional Jewish ballplayers.
Depending on which list you choose to follow, between 140 and 160 Jews have played major league baseball since the late 19th century. It all began with Lipman Pike in the 1870s, who is believed to have been the first professional Jewish baseball player.
Many of the players are obscure, known only to the most ardent followers of Jewish sports figures. None of them enjoyed careers as spectacular as Hall of Famers Koufax or Hank Greenberg, a slugger in the 1930s and 1940s, but most hung around in the big leagues for a bit longer than Yellen.
After a dry spell in the 1980s, there has been a relative resurgence of Jewish major leaguers in recent years. Depending on what standard of Jewishness is applied, there are currently between 10 and 12 members of the tribe playing pro ball, led by Los Angeles Dodgers star outfielder/first baseman Shawn Green.
Harry Danning, 92, is the oldest living Jewish player. An All-Star catcher for the New York Giants in the 1930s, Danning said he wasn’t bothered too much as a Jewish player. After all, he said, there were three other Jews on the team.
Sure, there were “bench jockeys” who needled him about his large nose — “Pitch under his nose, he can’t see the ball,” he remembers them saying — but they got on all the players, he said.
And once, when a hotel in Florida refused during spring training to house Danning and another Jewish Giant, Phil Weintraub, the team’s manager, Bill Terry, said he would house the entire team elsewhere unless the hotel took the whole squad. The hotel acceded to Terry’s request.
Danning, who lives in Valparaiso, Ind., was unable to attend the conference because of his age.
The Hall of Fame’s “Celebration of 143 American Jews in America’s Game” drew 300 participants from as far away as San Francisco. The event featured a trivia quiz and a clinic for kids, discussions on Koufax and Greenberg and panels with eight Jewish former players. The weekend was the first ethnic event held at the hall — and the food served under a tent outside the red brick building was certainly the first large-scale kosher meal served there.
Of the eight ballplayers in attendance, two were converts: Bob Tufts, a pitcher with a short-lived career in the 1980s, and Elliott Maddox, a black player who converted to Judaism while playing in the 1970s. After he converted, Maddox joked, “Instead of having everyone call me a shvartze, they called me a Jew.”
As the players recounted tales from their playing days, some focused on their Jewish backgrounds.
Mike Epstein, a slugging first baseman in the 1960s and 1970s, explained how he got his nickname. After he hit a mammoth home run in a minor league game, the opposing team’s manger said, “Nobody’s going to catch that, Super Jew.” The team’s batboy heard the remark and the next day all of Epstein’s jerseys, undershirts and caps had “Super Jew” written all over them.
Epstein, who inscribed a Star of David on his first baseman’s glove and spikes as a talisman, said he took the nickname proudly.