KING OF JEWISH BASEBALL

It’s Tuesday, September 25^th.  The tournament is over.  We lost to Spain in the finals 7-9 in 10 innings.  I am back at home, in New York, sitting alone in my room, the same place this all started when one day three months and 15,000 readers ago I started a wordpress blog called “My World Baseball Classic Blog”, before quickly, and thankfully, changing the name to “King of Jewish Baseball”.  What was then fantasy – making the team, playing in the finals, is now the past.  Everyone is gone.  The posters are down.  No more clubhouse.  No more gear.  No more free meals at the hotel.

back home, New York, in my room

It was not supposed to happen this way.  We could have won.  We should have won.  We were the best team on paper by far.  We had 25 professional baseball players on the team.  14 of them played this season in either Double A or Triple A.  The general sense was that we had already won.  We could taste it as they say.  On my way out to the field for the game I saw a golf cart pulling into the clubhouse full of beer and champagne for the post game celebration. By the end of the 1^st inning, we were winning 2-0, and every locker was party proofed, covered in plastic.  Each of us had imagined running out on the field and dog-piling on the mound so often and so clearly it was as if it had already happened.  And then all of a sudden, it didn’t happen.  After a bizarre 5 hour game, Spain won, and we lost, and it was all over, and instead of celebrating, we sat together in silence for 20 minutes staring at the floor until the coaching staff came in to speak to us.

I cannot shake the feeling that I want to turn back time and do it again, or that I am going to wake up and it will be the morning of the finals and we’ll get a chance to replay the game.  I cannot comprehend that it is over and that we did not win.  Reality has splintered and the trajectory of each of our lives will ricochet off this loss.  There were life altering implications for every single person involved if we had won.  The team would have been flown to Israel for a trip.  We would have started preparing for March for the World Baseball Classic in Tokyo or Puerto Rico or Australia or wherever the first round will be played. The Major Leaguers – Youk, Kinsler, maybe Braun, would have joined the team.  Money would have been raised for the new stadium in Israel.  A nation, at least some of them, would have rejoiced.  Thankfully, some of these thing will still happen despite the outcome, if somewhat slower.  There would have been a book written about our team.  Maybe a movie too.  Players and coaches would have been offered jobs.  So much was riding on this game.  I personally would have been bronzed and donated by the Israel Association of Baseball to the Smithsonian Institute for example.

Maybe it is our fault for putting too much on one game.  You can’t trust baseball.  It’s unpredictable.

Baseball is a game of failure as it’s said – a lot of getting out, a lot of getting hurt, getting cut, losing games.  Everyone of us on the team had experienced our own various successes and disappointments as players and coaches.  But this was going to make everything alright.  It was going to wipe all our personal slates clean and we were going to be champions, forever.  The guys on the team kept saying after the game – and keep in mind they all play for money, every day, for Major League organizations, in front of crowds and scouts and baseball execs – that they had never wanted to win a game so badly.  Doc Copeland said this was bigger than the 2 World Series he won with the Blue Jays.  Everyone was all in.  We worked hard.  We loved each other.  We wanted it so bad.

The loss is challenging my whole sense of logic.  We want to believe that we live in a world where if we are the better team and we do everything we can to win and we are fully invested for the all the right reasons that we will come out on top.  But we do not live in that world.  And we do not need this team and this loss to know that far worse things have happened to people who do not deserve it.

The entire experience was perfect, except for the ending.

In the technical sense, there is virtually no difference between winning and losing.  A hit here, a walk there, and we win.  The game could have gone either way as you’ll see if you take the time to watch the entire game posted below (I will, at some point) – 5 hours, 10 innings, 25 base-on-balls including walks and hit-by-pitches, 16 runs, 0 errors, bloopers, squibbers, infield hits, and line-outs…  Pederson’s ball in the bottom of the 9^th could have been rattling around in the right field corner instead of landing in the right fielders glove, and we’d all be champs, and this blog post would be much more like the one I had composed nearly in full in my mind announcing our victory.

http://web.worldbaseballclassic.com/wbc/2013/video/play.jsp?topic_id=38613768&content_id=24851669&query=game_pk%3D342971

But in the emotional sense, of course, winning or losing dictates almost completely the lasting impression.  Each one of us now has to deal with the loss individually and collectively.  We each will project our own sense of self-doubt onto the game.  We will each feel that our individual contribution is somehow responsible for the outcome.

So what do we do now?  How do we deal with being on the doorstep of history only to ultimately not be allowed inside?

I personally can come up with only one solution.  We are going to attempt to qualify in 4 years again, and I am going to be on the team again.  We are going to celebrate on that mound and in that clubhouse and that champagne is going to taste that much sweeter.  We may have lost this game, but we will win in the end.  And we will let the world know about it. We cannot be stopped simply because we will not stop.  We are, after all, always and forever….

Team Israel, the Kings of Jewish Baseball

I will keep posting on this blog.  A few more posts at least.  Maybe more.  I do not know.  I need to find a job, make some money, open a store, a new baseball facility, start charging Louisville Slugger a fee to advertise on this site, something.  For now, I will leave you the same way we started, with an e-mail from Peter…

To All Team Israel Players, Coaches and Staff,

Having had 36 hours to reflect a bit, having had the sting of defeat soften a bit, I just wanted to say, this Yom Kippur eve, that you are all a great bunch of guys, that it was my honor to know each and every one of you, and that this team will certainly go down in history as having represented the country of Israel and the Jewish people with incredible honor, admiration and respect.  

I am not one for many words, and I just wanted to thank each and every one of you for taking the time out to help our cause, for giving your maximum efforts, for getting so completely involved and dedicated, and for just being a part of this.  We can only imagine what might have been, but we need to be completely satisfied with what was and what we can make of this going forward. 

This holiday is a time of personal introspection and contemplation, and no matter how one commemorates it I want to wish you all a Happy New Year and I can promise all of you that our mission will continue, and that you will hear from us in the months ahead.   

“May you be signed well in the Book of Life”

And so, friends, we seem to have come to the end.  It has been exactly a week since I returned from Florida.  One cannot simply be the King of Jewish Baseball forever.  One must, after all, get a job, and take an e-publishing course at NYU. Every story, every book, every life, no matter how great, and no matter how desperately we want to think otherwise, must end.  And this is it.

I will revisit the blog and will post relevant news as it occurs, but as for regular posts from your favorite genius, this will be the last.

I printed and re-read the blog.  Here it is.

the Greatest Blog of All Time

Nearly 200 pages of musings, photos, videos, and prolific exaggerations whipped together like a violent and beautiful tornado of genius and technology given shape in the form the Greatest Blog of All Time.  We have covered some ground, from Gold Jewelry to Richie’s Gym, the A’s, the T-Dogs, and, of course, the Tournament, the Team, the Wins, and the Loss.  And it has been fun, maybe the most fun you’ve ever had, the most fun you’ve ever had reading at-least.  And I thank you for joining me– us, for the ride.

Just because this is the last page of the Book-Video-Blog-Genius-Masterpiece-Semi-Autobiographical-Graphic-Novel known as the King of Jewish Baseball, it is not the end of the road for baseball in Israel, and it is not the end of the road for me.  Not even close.  And we still need your help.  To support Israel Baseball, visit the Israel Association of Baseball’s website… www.baseball.org.il.

And always remember, no matter what time of day or night, feeling good or bad, sad or indifferent, know, my children, that as you rise each day and make your coffee and tie your shoes and drive your cars and think your thoughts, you are the King of Something – the King of Doing the Dishes, or the King of Turkey Sandwiches, the King of Laundry Day, or the King of Listening to Talk Radio.  So, ask yourselfs, one last time…

What are you the King of?

The only thing I know with certainty that you are not…

Nate Fish, The King of All Jewish Baseball

Signing off.

Got this e-mail December 3rd, 2012, 6 weeks ago…

Hi Nathan,

I got your name from Ami. I was talking to Ami about my plans to start Softball here at Yeshiva University and he mentioned that you might be interested in helping us start the team and would be an excellent resource for us if your schedule didn’t allow you to coach. I would love to have a conversation with you about our plans when you have a free moment. Please let me know what is the best way to reach out to you.

 Thanks

—

Let us, again, commence with an exercise, let us ask ourselves, logically, if we were an all Jewish University, and we wanted to start a softball program, who would we contact? – That is correct, we would contact the King of All Jewish Baseball.  There is surely only one man qualified for the task of creating a softball program for Yeshiva– coaches, players, uniforms, equipment, gyms, fields, wins, losses, a team, a season – so much to do.

Just 6 weeks after receiving the email above, we made history, a little history, at least, little enough that it didn’t feel like history, as history, I suspect, has a way of feeling, or not feeling, I should say – that’s right, Ladies and Geetles, last night, we held the first ever practice for the Yeshiva University Maccabees Womens Fastpitch Softball Team.

11 women attended “evaluations”.  We have a total of 18 on the team.  3 coaches. 3 practices per week in the gym until the weather breaks, then we’ll head outside.

And so the King of Jewish Baseball continues to march forward through the perilous, barren landscape of Jewish Baseball, or Softball, in this case, leaving in his wake only vast swaths of scorched earth, and, of course, the distinct odor of Jewish Baseball residue.  To life.  To the 2013 Yeshiva University Maccabees Womens Softball Team.

The first YU Maccabees softball practice… ever.

Just got home from the park.  We beat Spain 4-2!  Nate Freiman hit 2 more home-runs!  He has 4 total in 2 games.  Check it out…

http://web.worldbaseballclassic.com/wbc/2013/video/play.jsp

It was a magical day at the park for the Greatest Jewish Baseball Team of All Time.  We’re only one game away from winning the tournament.  France and South Africa play tonight.  The winner plays Spain tomorrow afternoon.  And we play the winner of tomorrow’s game on Sunday for the Championship.

This is not a true double elimination tournament.  We will have no losses going into the finals.  And the team we play, whoever it is, will have 1 loss.  Usually, in a double elimination, the team with 1 loss would have to beat the undefeated team twice, but Sunday will be a single game, winner takes all.

And so it all comes down to this, as they say.  All of the things, all of the time, all of the people.  Team Israel, Grand Finale, Sunday, 5pm.  Prepare yourselfs for the Greatest Jewish Baseball Magic Show on Earth.

6/18/2012

82 days ‘til we report.

Just got back from my morning workout at Richie’s.

I played my first game with the A’s yesterday.  We won 7-4.   The team had gotten off to a bad start.  Before yesterday, our record was 1 win and 3 losses, so this win takes us to just 2 and 3.

It was an early game, 10am.  Shlo and I agreed to meet at 8:50 at the Norwood stop of the J train by the field.  I got there early and tried to find the field myself and ended wandering around in a cemetery before finally heading to the right place.

The Zorrilla is an all-Dominican league in East New York, one of the few remaining truly dangerous areas in New York City.  The league is full of guys released at various points in their minor league careers.  The Zorrilla is both legendary and undiscovered.  The field is, as I found out, located in a hard-to-find corner of Brooklyn on Atlantic Avenue way out where Atlantic Avenue turns into Conduit Boulevard and where Brooklyn and Queens turn into Long Island.  A steady stream of traffic runs behind the outfield fence on Atlantic.  This is the first year for the league’s new field.  It’s a nice surface.  There are fenced in dugouts down each baseline.  There are stands for about 500 behind the dugouts and backstop.  And there’s even a small press table just to the right of the backstop behind home plate where an announcer introduces pinch hitters and calls the play-by-play in Spanish over the little PA system.  I have heard stories about the league, that by late afternoon the stands are full of wives and girlfriends and children of the players banging pots and pans and old drunk men gambling on every pitch.  But it was mostly quiet when we arrived, just one or two players on the other team getting lose down in right field.

There are 10 teams in the Zorrilla, and we, despite the slow start, are the best team in the league.  Each year the winner of the league gets a free trip to the Domincan Republic to play in a tournament down there, and not only do we often win the Zorrilla, we win the tourney in the DR.  There are a total of ten teams in the league.  Each team has a Major League Team name.  We are the Oakland A’s.  When we break from huddles we yell, “Oakland”, despite playing on a public field in the ghettos of East New York 3,000 miles away.   Because there are 10 teams, 5 games are played at the field each weekend.  Two games are  Saturday, three Sunday.  Game times are 1pm and 4pm Saturdays, and 10am, 2pm, and 5pm on Sundays.  But as I am learning, games NEVER start on time.  At 10, when the game was supposed to start, I had already gone through my warm-up– stretched, band work, throwing program, sprints, dry swings and ground balls in the bullpen down the left field line, and I was staying busy pacing around in front of our dugout, and we still didn’t have enough players to start the game – the coaches weren’t even there yet.  As a neurotic Jew and a baseball genius, this threatens my every notion about what it takes to be good at something, especially something as steeped in ritual and regiment as baseball – Major League players report to the park as early as 6 hours prior to game time to begin getting ready, but this isn’t the big leagues, it’s the Zorrilla.  Shlo had warned me about this.  Games typically start and hour and half late as players show up shirts untucked, eyes puffy, stinking of booze.  By 10:30 when the ump was threatening to call a forfeit we had nine players and we got started at 10:40, early for Zorrilla standards.

I started the game hitting 8^th and playing right field.  I have not played an inning in the outfield since middle school.  But when they asked me if I could do I simply said, “Hell yes”.  I have to earn my stripes, so I borrowed an outfielders glove from Ray, our short stop, and ran out to right field.  First hitter of the game hit a lazy fly ball down the right field line and I tracked it down and caught it for the first out.

We were playing the Indians.  They had a big kid throwing, about 6’4”, 225 easy.  Fastball was 84-87, little curveball.  But he was young, and I could tell early on he had command problems.  We scratched one out in the second innings, and Shlo was rolling.  In my first at bat, I came up with runners on 1^st and 2^nd, no one out.  I have no idea what the signs are, and no one speaks English, but considering my status as the new guy and a knower of all things baseball, I figured it was a good time to get a bunt down, so I squared to bunt and took ball one.  Judging from the body language of the third base coach, I had guessed right – he had given the bunt sign, so I squared again on the second pitch, ball two.  Squared again on the third pitch but was going to take a strike if he threw one, but no, ball three.  Did not square on 3-0 and decided to work my stride timing and took a ball 4.  I eventually was relieved from base running duties when the next hitter grounded out to short stop. I was out at second base on the fiedler’s choice.  And a run scored on the play and went up 2-0.

Shlo had bad luck when our first and third baseman made errors in the 4^th, and he gave up 4 unearned runs, 4-2, them.

By the 4^th inning, most of our players had shown up and the little field was transforming into the madhouse I have heard so much about.  Families arrived and set up their things in the stands.  The announcer had his PA system at full blast.  The place was coming alive.  Our regular right fielder who played in the Mets organization arrived and I moved to my 3^rd base.   We loaded the bases in the 5^th inning and sent our regular catcher whose name happens to be Jose Reyes in to pinch hit now that he was ready.  In the Zorrilla, it is a bit difficult to decipher who is who and where anyone has played prior, but Jose has clearly played some baseball.  When I met him at our exhibition game a few weeks ago, he shook my hand and smiled – “shook” is a bit misleading, I put my hand in his where it disappeared momentarily before he was kind enough to return it to me.  I just looked him up on Baseball Reference, a website that lists baseball players and their stats.  He played from 1994-2002 in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization.  On “BR” he is listed at 6’1, 188lbs.  But either the scale was broken that day, or he has grown.  I would guess he is 6’1”, 240 pounds, solid muscle.  His head is two of mine.  I had asked Shlo to from now on please if I am going to meet someone of that size to warn me so I can interact with said individual minus the look of shock.  The Indians brought in a new pitcher to face Jose, and he proceeded to hit a bases clearing line-drive in left center field, we’re winning 5-4.  If he had any air under it at all, it would have cleared Atlantic Ave, and possibly the Atlantic Ocean.  And we never turned back.  I finished 1 for 3 with a walk, fly out to left, fly out to right, and an RBI double to bring home our final run of the day in that order and officially made it through my first game in El Zorrilla.  My leg hurt a little when I hit the double, but in general, the apparatus feels pretty good.  Just need to keep on top of the program every day.

The A’s in the dugout. That’s Shlo in the foreground!

Have another game tomorrow night in the Bronx with the Thunder Dogs.  And am going to the Mets game tonight with David.  Dave is 17.  He’s one of the kids I coach.  I have known him since he was 10 and even went to his Bar Mitzvah.  His mom, Robin, passed away last week.  So Dewey and I are taking him to the game tonight to get his mind of things.  This blog post is for you, Dave.  You’re the best!

6/16/2012

It’s 10:59.  Just got home.  Yesterday was my last day at work.  We celebrated.  At one point, roughly 20 hours ago I suppose, I was momentarily not allowed entrance in a club because I looked like an astronaut according to the man with the velvet rope.  In his defense, he did not know I am the King of All Jewish Baseball, and I was dressed like a fool.  I went from work (East Harlem), to our 8-and-under travel banquet dinner at Larry’s house (West Village), to Max’s (Lower East Side), so I borrowed a shirt from Max.  The shirt was paisley and too small, but who cared, I was free!

We went to a Depeche Mode party.  The shirt was smaller than I had originally thought, and now was fully unbuttoned, and I was dancing, alone.  By the time we arrive to LeBron I believe it was called, the shirt looked like a doily stuck to my back.  I was essentially naked, and the man with the rope was simply not willing to let a someone like myself into a place otherwise reserved for more put-together men and women.  I handled the deal like a gentleman, I am royalty, after all, and was ultimately permitted entry.  Fast forward roughly 5 hours to me, dehydrated and somewhat off balance, running sprints in the park near my house.  It may have been a bad idea.  My left leg hurts now, my left hip and quad.  I think if I can manage it today, it will get stronger and feel fine.

I have a game in the morning.  The A’.  The legendary Zorrilla.  I am not sure how the team is doing so far, wins and losses wise.  They have played 3 games I believe.  But this will be my first regular season game with them.  I’ve missed the others because of work.

Shlomo is pitching for us.  Shlomo is on the WBC team too.  I repeat, Shlo is on the WBC team.  Shlomo aka Shlomo Slow-Mo-SHo-SHo-Joe-Joe-Jack-in-the-Hat-Jemmy-Ono-Kinoko Lipitz is the Ace of the Israeli National Team (And of the A’s).  Straight off the beaches of Tel Aviv, Shlo was the second Israeli ever to play college baseball in the US (he played at University of California San Diego), he played for the Netanya Tigers in the Israel Baseball League where we met, and has in general been plowing through hitters for a good long while now.  I coached him in last year’s European Championships, and he did some amazing things.  I probably as a baseball coach should not admit to letting him have done this, but Shlo threw 214 pitches in 13 scoreless innings against the British National team in the championship game[s] last summer.  We had to beat the British team twice in a day to advance.  The Shlobot blanked them in the first game, 7-0, and asked to start the second game. And we let him.  He threw 4 more shutout innings in the second game when they scored a run and we took him out.  We ultimately lost the second game of the day, 2-5, and the British advanced to the next round.

Besides being a stealth pitching machine, Shlogurt also happens to live about 5 minutes from me in Brooklyn and manages a large music venue in the city and in general maintains an appearance of a drunken magician.  We’ve been training together Tuesdays and Thursdays in Mcarren park in Williamsburg.  We usually meet around 9:30 and finish around 11:30 and then we ride Shlo’s electric scooter to the bagel store.  Between my gold collection, and his appearance, we are known around town as the Baseball Banditos, or we would like to think so at least.  We can get the bandit mobile almost up to 15 miles per hour with the two of us on there with our gear bags.  Tomorrow, Banditos ride! For now, must get good rest, but not before I to my exercises for my leg…