KING OF JEWISH BASEBALL

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…

Today is June 15, 2012.  In 85 days, on Sept. 9^th, I am reporting to Jupiter, Florida to play for Team Israel in the 2012 World Baseball Classic.  Here’s the email I received from the team last week…

Congratulations,

You have been selected to be part of the WBC Team Israel roster of players.  This is quite an honor and each of you is deserving of it because of your accomplishments and talents, and past performance for Israel National Teams.  As the highest level event to which an Israel National baseball team has ever been invited, the IAB wants to recognize your accomplishments, and wants to continue the forward momentum that we have generated over the last 5 years, by having you play a part in the WBC qualifying round.  

 The IAB has set 3 goals for our involvement in the WBC tournament:

1.  To win the qualifiers and advance to the final rounds in March;

2.  To further develop and grow baseball in Israel and help finance the IAB Home facility on land donated by the City of Raanana;

3.  To strengthen the contacts between the Jewish American and Israeli communities through baseball.  

 The WBC qualifying tournament will be held from September 19-23 in Jupiter Florida.  Team Israel will be matched up against national teams from South Africa, France and Spain.  Brad Ausmus has agreed to be the Team Israel Manager, and Shawn Green and Gabe Kapler have agreed to be player/coaches – it is an honor to be coached by ex-players of this caliber, and to have them supporting the cause of developing baseball in Israel.  

There will be two training camps prior to the tournament: from September 9-13 for the Israel Senior National team players and from September 13 – 18 you will be joined by Jewish American players who will make up the bulk of the travelling squad for the tournament.  A number of Israeli ballplayers will be chosen to play on the WBC travelling squad.  The balance of the players will be invited to watch and cheer on your teammates. 

Now, there’s a lot there, so let me help clarify.  Peter is Peter Kurz, the President of the Israel Association of Baseball (IAB), the governing body for baseball in Israel.  Our coaching staff, as you see, is comprised of three recently retired Major League players with an impressive amount of combined games played and home-runs and even World Series rings among them.  Brad Ausmus who will manage, caught for 18 years in the Big Leagues.  Gabe Kapler played for 13 years and was playing right field for the Red Sox when they won the World Series in 2004.  And Shawn Greene hit 328 home runs in the Major Leagues.  All three guys were in the Majors within the last 5 years and Green and Kapler are going to play as well as coach.

There are two dates to report to camp.  The Israeli’s, meaning the “Israel Senior National Team”, will report September 9th.  The American players will report four days later September 13th.

The Israeli SNT is the real Team Israel, if you want to call it that.  The team is made up of Israelis and a few North Americans with Israeli passports.  The core group has played together for years now.  The individual players from the SNT play primarily on different teams in the “Premier League”, or the men’s league, in Israel.  And then every two years or so the team unites for international competitions.  Last summer, 2011, they lost to Great Britain in the finals of the European Championship Qualifiers failing to advance to the 2012 finals in Amsterdam.  I know all this because I was an assistant coach for the tournament and was there screaming in the dugout. So, despite not being Israeli (I’m from Cleveland and live in New York), as the King of All Jewish Baseball, I have been invited to report with the Israelis.

You may ask, what makes one the King of All Jewish Baseball?  Everyone knows one cannot just proclaim themselves a King, it would be heretical and insane.  Well, you will know, I have the credentials.  I, baseball genius and the King of Jewish Baseball, have fought the battles.  I’ve been to Israel to play or coach 5 times in the last 9 years.  I bravely defended Tel Aviv for the Tel Aviv Lightning in the Israel Baseball League in the one and only season of the wounded league.  I’ve fought twice for the United States in the grueling gauntlet that is the Maccabi Games aka the Jewish Olympics bringing home gold and silver medals for the children of my village.  I was an assistant Coach/Prince of the Israel National Team.  And I was recently named head coach of the United States Junior National Team for the 2013 Maccabi Games and am prepared to lead that team earnestly to victory.

The American players, the heavy hitters, will report on the 13th as I mentioned already.  The Major League season will still be going on in September, so the Americans reporting are mostly guys currently playing minor league baseball.  In the World Baseball Classic, you do not have to be a citizen of the nation you play for, you simply have to be eligible for citizenship of that nation.  For other nations, “eligible” is defined most commonly as having had a grandparent with citizenship or according to the “right of return” rule for that country.  In the case of Israel, any Jew in the world is eligible for citizenship meaning Ryan Braun, Ian Kinsler, Ike Davis, Kevin Youkilis (I played college ball at the University of Cincinnati with Youk and we’re still good friends), and a slew of other Jewish Major and Minor League baseball players are eligible which instantly makes Israel a contender.

The actual World Baseball Classic will take place during spring training of 2013.  The tournament we will be playing in this September is the qualifying round like it says in Peter’s e-mail.

There are 16 teams in the WBC.  The top 12 teams from the 2009 Classic automatically are invited back for 2013.  The bottom 4 teams (Canada, Chinese Taipei, Panama, and South Africa) drop into the qualifier with 12 new countries (Brazil, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Philippines, Spain, and Thailand) that have been invited, for the first time, to try and qualify.  16 teams.  4 groups of 4.  Winner of each group advances to the WBC.  We have to win our bracket with Spain, South Africa, and France to get into the tournament.  If any of this is confusing, I will explain it more often and more clearly as the tournament gets closer and as we get info about the team.

Here was my reply to Peter…

Best e-mail I’ve received in a while!  Will be ready to report and kick ass Sept 9-25, gladly. 

Thank you so much for the opportunity.  Let’s win this thing.

Is this roster info public? – As in, can i tell people?

Thanks!

-Fish

His reply…

Fish,

You can tell people, but you are not yet on the WBC tournament team and I hope that was clear…..there is still a long way to go and your struggle will not be easy and there are no promises at all…ok??

Take care

Peter

So “on team Israel” is a bit of an overstatement.  Trying to make the team is more accurate.  Am I stupid? – Or did that original e-mail say I was on the team?  It turns out, there will be a total of 50 of us reporting to camp vying for 26 roster spots.  All I want is a shot. I may have, as King of All Jewish Baseball, been issued an honorary invite, but what they don’t know is that I am planning on showing up and kicking ass.  It’s been four years since I’ve played competitively, and almost ten years since I had a shot at playing legitimate pro baseball.  And this is my last chance to prove to myself and the world I’m any good, so I’m going all in, training every day, playing 50 games before camp, and putting my body on the line one last time.  At an age when I should supposedly be settling down (32) and securing what is commonly called a “future” for myself, besides the upcoming tournament, I am heading into an amazing stretch of the unknown.  In the last month I’ve had my heart broken, witnessed someone kill themselves, and quit my job.  Once my paychecks stop coming in August, I have no plan.  So I’m doing what anyone in their right mind would do in the face of ultimate uncertainty, I’m starting a blog, shaving the sides of my head, and buying lots of gold jewelry.

Gold snake bracelet.  Newest piece.

From now on I am going to chronicle every game, training session, physical therapy appointment trip to the sporting goods store, bad hair-cut, massage, strike-out, gold necklace, home-run, broken bat, error, diving play, and injury on my journey to Jupiter.  And  it is all just for you!

my new hair cut.

Here’s my final reply to Peter…

You got it, Peter.

I am gonna claw crawl and hit my way onto that team!
Thanks.

-Fish

II

Honestly, I should have started writing this blog a long time ago.  I may have just received the official invite, but I have already been training for five months, and a lot’s happened – I just haven’t had time.

Two years ago I helped found a small indoor baseball facility East Harlem. Every day I, and the rest of the staff, transform the little gym there into an indoor baseball heaven.  We carry 2,000 pounds of astro-turf cut into 14 foot sections out of the little office where we’ve stacked it the night before.  We haul out L-screens, buckets of baseball, tees, indoor pitching mounds… then we drop down three batting cages from the ceiling, get the nets straightened out, and open the doors for the kids.

my office. that’s the turf rolled up on the ground

post transformation

We have over 1,500 players in our baseball program.  We have nine “travel teams”, one in each age division between 8 and 16 years-old.  We have a developmental league for 6 to 8 year-olds.  We do baseball birthday parties, we train high-school teams, and run camps and clinics all year.  I alone do upwards of 1,000 private hitting and pitching lessons every year.  Point being, I have been too busy to start a blog.  But lucky for us, today is my last day managing the Academy.  Roughly one month ago I walked into the ED’s office (ED in this case does not stand for erectile dysfunction, but Executive Director), and resigned, and simultaneously fired off a 5,000 word email to the board of directors criticizing the organization officially sealing my fate as a soon-to-be unemployed baseball coach. Best thing I ever did.  If you are having any trouble deciding if you should leave your job, allow me to help clarify things for you, leave, now, and never look back.  Go do what everyone wants to do but are not brave enough to try– be yourself for a living, or better, be the King of All Jewish Baseball.

I will say, it is nice to have a baseball facility when you’re training to play.  I take a couple hundred swings a day in the cage.  When I started training, I didn’t think I could do it.  My body hurt too much.  I’m mostly used up, and I know it.  My last season playing officially was 2008 in Germany. I was playing in the Bundesliga, Germany’s top pro league, where I lived in an insane asylum in Munich next to the team’s home field and didn’t know anyone but my teammates and wrote a blog like this one mostly to keep myself company for the six months I was there (www.whatthefuckamidoingingermay.blogspot.com). I didn’t think I would make it through the season.  My arm hurt, my hands hurt, my knees hurt.  And now I’m four years older.  I play baseball between 4 and 9 hours every day.  I throw the ball roughly 500 times in that span, and hit a lot on my own or to demo for the kids.  My body is worn out.

But I just completed six weeks of physical therapy, I joined Richie’s, the gym around the corner from my apartment in Brooklyn, I am learning how to run properly from Ed “Go Go” Lovelace (Ed was on the the USA Olympic team in ’92 with Michael Johnson and is the sprint coach for Major League Baseball), and in general have been slowly piecing myself together.  I train every morning.  And I work my shift at the Academy every night.

I’m also playing on two teams to get ready, The Bronx Thunder Dogs in the Westechester/Rockland County Wood Bat League (WRBL), and the Oakland A’s in the Zorrilla – New York’s best, and craziest, men’s league. I have played a total of five games so far.  And I am starting to figure it out as they say, refigure in my case.  I am a combined 5 for 15.  I have 2 singles, 2 doubles, and a home-run so far.  A quick story about my last game with the T-Dogs before I head off for an afternoon training session for my last shift at the Baseball Academy…

Sunday, five days ago I guess, after a 9am-3pm shift at the Baseball Academy following a long night, we, the T-Dogs, drove up to Peekskill, New York for a 6pm double header against the Peekskill Tides.  They have a nice little park up there.  I woke-up as we pulled into the parking lot behind the outfield fence.  I changed behind the dugout and headed to the outfield to get warmed-up.  The fences were shallow, just 330 feet to center field, but thirty feet tall.  Someone during warm-ups was making fun of another guy on the team for hitting a ball of the fence last year and only getting a single.  I should have known then.  There was a big lake behind the bleachers on the third base side of the field and the sun was setting over the water.  It was a warm night.

I struck out on my first at bat, a 3-2 fastball about 4 inches off the outside corner.  I looked quickly at the ump and walked back to the dugout without a fuss and thought to myself, “Good at-bat.  Stick with that approach and something good is going to happen.”  And in my second at-bat, on a 2 and 1 fastball a little up in the zone, I hit a long home-run over the left center field fence.  I knew it was gone when I hit it, and just dropped my bat and started jogging, didn’t even look at it.  It had been a while since I rounded the bases like that and I felt unsure of my stride, like I was going to trip any moment.  We won the first game 5-2.

The second game was moving quickly.  It was 2-1, us, in the 4^th inning.  They had a runner on 3^rd base, and a lefty came up.  Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, I play third base.  I had made a catch earlier in the game diving for a ball on the warning track in foul territory on a pop-up bunt attempt and had cut my arm open pretty badly on the gravel and was bleeding, but I was feeling good.  The lefty hit a ground ball to me.  Lefty’s don’t usually hit ground balls to third base, and when they do sometimes it’s kind of a que shot off the end of the bat and the ball will have a lot of spin which is exactly what happened, and instead of staying relaxed and just handling the ball, I stabbed at it, mishandled it, then bounced the throw to first.  First baseman couldn’t come up with it, runner from third scores on the throwing error, batter base-runner winds up on second, tie game, 2-2.

Fast forward to the bottom of the last inning.  It’s still 2-2.  I am leading off the bottom of the ninth for us.  The count goes to 3-2.  I step out of the box like I do before every pitch, close my eyes, and say to myself, “commit to your best swing”.  I  wanted to redeem myself for the error.  He threw me a fastball down the middle.  Bam.  Clean contact.  I saw the ball lifting up into the night sky.  I flipped my bat, and start jogging to first base, game fucking over!  Walk off!  Right?  I hit this one way better than the first one.  Their pitcher was walking off the mound slowly towards their dugout.  But just before I get to first base I hear “Chink”, the ball hitting the top of the tall fence in left-center field.  I turned on the jets to try and at least get to second base.  Their centerfielder bare handed it cleanly off the fence and made a perfect throw to the second baseman.  I was out by 15 feet.  Their dugout went nuts.  We started the inning not with a game-ending home-run, not with a double, not even with a single, but with an out.  I tried to big league it, and I got burned.  Don’t tell any of the kids I coach.  I have no idea how the ball didn’t get out.  It was later and the air was heavy.  Maybe that’s why.  I usually never pimp the game.  Laying out on the warning track on a bunt attempt is much more consistent with my style of play and a bat flip and a slow jog to first base.  And the one time I did it, the baseball gods learned me real fast.  We lost 4 innings later 2-3 at exactly midnight before getting in our cars to drive the hour-and-a-half back to the city.  I got home around 2am, showered, iced, did my rehab and core work on a yellow towel in the living room, and went to sleep thinking about why that ball didn’t get out and planning out my workout for the morning in my mind so that it wouldn’t happen again.

the walk-off that never was

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