The third annual Oakland A’s Jewish Heritage Night will be extra special for the Jewish community this year: The A’s have a Jewish player on their roster.
Say hello to 6-foot-8 first baseman Nate Freiman (pronounced “FRY-men”), who belted four home runs in just 12 at-bats for Team Israel in a preliminary round of the World Baseball Classic last September.
Stocked mainly with Jewish minor leaguers, the Israeli squad beat South Africa and Spain to make it to the final of the four-team qualifier. But with a trip to the main WBC tournament on the line, Israel fell 9-7 to Spain in the title game.
“It was a fantastic experience,” Freiman, 26, said in an interview with j. “Unfortunately we lost … in the championship game, which was extremely disappointing. But the 10 days leading up to that was a fantastic experience as a team.”
The 28-man team had only three Israelis on the roster, but manager Brad Ausmus and another former major leaguer, Shawn Green, helped fill out the the roster by contacting a number of U.S. Jewish players.
“It became obvious that we could put together a very good team,” Ausmus said in a September New York Times interview, “and when we started to contact the players, the vast majority embraced the idea of playing for Israel with open arms.”
Freiman said he soaked up as much knowledge as he could from Ausmus and Green, whose 328 career home runs are second only to Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg (331) among Jewish major leaguers. Green, who retired in 2007, was Team Israel’s designated hitter.
“I tried to learn as much as I could from Shawn Green,” the right-handed hitting Freiman said. “He had amazing success in the game.”
Freiman’s career quickly became a roller-coaster ride after the World Baseball Classic qualification round in September.
A minor league slugger in the San Diego Padres organization from 2009 through 2012, he was selected by the Houston Astros last December in the Rule 5 draft (an annual process intended to prevent teams from stockpiling young talent in the minor leagues).
Then, after going through most of spring training with the Astros, he was claimed off waivers by the Oakland A’s just a week before the regular season started on April 1.
“It was a whirlwind for a couple of months,” Freiman said. “Sometimes I’d wake up and not know where I was.”
Freiman got off to a quick start for Oakland, collecting two hits and one RBI in his first major league game, which came on April 3 against the Seattle Mariners. In his seventh game — against the team that put him on waivers, the Houston Astros — he hit his first major league homer, a three-run shot in an 11-2 win for the A’s.
In May, he was voted the American League Rookie of the Month, for batting .351 (13-for-37) with three doubles, one home run and nine RBIs in 14 games.
Heading into this week’s break for the All-Star Game, Freiman was batting .262 with two home runs and 17 RBIs, having played in 49 of Oakland’s 95 games.
“This group [of players] is fantastic,” he said. “I love the guys in this clubhouse and I’m really happy to be here.”
Freiman has struggled to earn regular playing time in part because of a deep roster that has put the A’s atop the A.L. West with a 56-39 record. Most of the starts at first base have gone to Brandon Moss, who has 16 home runs and 48 RBIs.
But Freiman said he’s always prepared when the team calls on him to play.
“I practice every day in the field and make sure I’m loose and ready to go,” he said. “I get in the batting cage and I watch the [opposing] pitchers during the games to see what they’re trying to do and how they’re doing.”
Growing up in the Boston area, Nathan Samuel Freiman (born Dec. 31, 1986) attended Wellesley High School, then went on to earn a degree in history at Duke University, where he set the school’s home run record with 43.
Last year, he married professional golfer Amanda Blumenherst, and has caddied for her during tournaments. Both went to Duke and were the Atlantic Coast Conference’s senior male and female athletes of the year in 2009. (Blumenherst is not Jewish.)
Freiman was bar mitzvahed at Temple Beth Elohim, a Reform synagogue in Wellesley that posted a “mazel tov” to Freiman on its Twitter account after he won Rookie of the Month honors in May.
His father, Len, is an attorney, and his mother, Marjorie, is a Jewish educator, according to InterfaithFamily.com, which notes she has been involved with a Boston-area federation program called “Parenting Your Teen Through a Jewish Lens.”
Freiman said he’s looking forward to Jewish Heritage Night on July 30 against the Toronto Blue Jays. “I think it’ll be a lot of fun,” he said. “It’s something people will really look forward to.”
The $26 Jewish heritage seats are located in the plaza infield section, and the cost of each ticket includes a souvenir yarmulke and a voucher for either a Hebrew National hot dog, a falafel wrap or $5 in food.
At the first A’s Jewish Heritage Night in 2011, when 650 tickets were sold, the A’s rolled to a 14-0 victory over the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Ticket sales nearly doubled for last year’s game, which the A’s won 3-0 over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The ticket allotment for this year’s game is more than 1,200 seats, and A’s officals say it will sell out. A number of local organizations, including synagogues and the JCC of the East Bay, have purchased large blocs of tickets.
Oakland A’s Jewish Heritage Night, July 30 vs. Toronto Blue Jays, 7:05 p.m. At O.co Coliseum. $26, includes souvenir and food item. Free parking (Tuesday promotion). www.oaklandathletics.com or (510) 563-2205