And so we meet again– me, you, Ladies, Geetles, millions of faithful readers.
The article in Details Magazine was released yesterday to much fanfare (http://www.details.com/culture-trends/critical-eye/201303/team-israel-world-baseball-classic-qualifier). Due to the online version of the article hitting the net, KOJB readership has gone from the usual 46 “views” per day all the way up to 52. So, before we break the internet, let me seize this magical moment in time, take this opportunity, if you will, to trick you into buying something. For that is, after all, what we are supposed to do to one another, is it not?
Before I was the King of All Jewish Baseball, or, better put, before I knew I was the King of All Jewish Baseball, I was just a man, with an afro, in a movie, about Jewish Baseball. And that movie is called… Holy Land Hardball.
In 2007, a genius who specializes in making bad ideas into real things, something I admire very much, Larry Baras, a Boston bagel maker who had earned a small fortune selling his “Unholy Bagels”, pre-stuffed, pre-packages, holeless bagels with cream cheese, decided, naturally, to start a professional baseball league in Israel. And another man– two men, really, Brett Rapkin and Erik Kesten, also geniuses, as it were, from Los Angeles, recognized the certain kind of crazy in Larry’s idea, and decided to make a movie about the creation of this Israel Baseball League, the first “professional” baseball league in the Middle East, the Kings of Jewish Baseball Documentary Film Making (despite it being a stiff category), if you will.
Brett and Erik brought their cameras to the first tryout for the Israel Baseball League at Dan Duquette’s camp in the Berkshires (Dan now is the general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, but, at the time, was the head of Player Development for the IBL). And I happened to be there too, trying out. And the rest, as they say in… the movies, is history. I was eventually selected by the Tel Aviv Lighting and went on, along with 120 teammates, friends, coaches, roommates, and league executives, to play what I, the King of All Jewish Baseball, personally guarantee, was the craziest baseball season ever, anywhere.
After the season, the film was released, and Brett and Dan and I and everyone else who was involved went on a raucous, no holds-barred film tour. We went to Jewish Film festivals, synagogues, colleges, JCCs, we visited anyone who would have us, drinking Poland Springs by the dozen and politely answering questions about the experience. For a period of six months or so, we dominated the Elderly Jewish Social Scene up and down the Eastern Seaboard. We were unstoppable. The film won Best Documentary at the Boston Jewish Film Festival. It aired on the MLB Network. Variety loved us! – “You don’t have to be Jewish or understand a box score to embrace the crowd-pleasing national-pastime docu ‘Holy Land Hardball.'”
And now, all these years later, due to a unique positioning of the planets coincidentally timed with Brett’s parents insisting he get the boxes of DVDs out of their garage in LA, we are making this one-time, irresistable offer. WE WILL SELL AND SEND DIRECTLY TO YOU A COPY OF HOLY LAND HARDBALL, SIGNED BY THE DIRECTOR AND THE KING OF ALL JEWISH BASEBALL, FOR ONLY THE VERY AVERAGE PRICE OF JUST $19.95. The DVDs can be used for the following… Birthday gifts (ages 0-125), bar-mitvah gifts, bat-mitvah gifts, coaster/tiny coffe table, buy lots and build a “house of Holy Land Hardball DVDs”, frisbee, shin guard[s], snow shoes, a time machine, a space taker upper– you can even use it to watch the movie and be entertained for 90 minutes.
To buy your very own copy of Holy Land Hardball, just click the link below.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=251237385255