Shawn Green: Coming Home Shawn Green

American and Canadian Jews' love affair with baseball is nothing new. In fact, it's been going on for over a century. Baseball was by far the most popular national sport when most Jews immigrated to North America between 1880 and 1920. For many children of immigrants, playing baseball was seen as the first step towards becoming part of their new land. 

It is hard to call one sport "Jewish" and another not, since Jewish athletes have participated in practically every sport. But there is something about baseball that has captured the Jewish imagination. Maybe it is because the sport has so much history. Professional baseball began in the 1870s. Even a casual fan quickly learns that he or she can compare every player's statistics with those of past and present players. Many immigrant writers have described how they studied Talmud in the morning and baseball players' "stats" in the afternoon.    

Maybe, too, baseball is so Jewish because, unlike some team sports, the role of each individual is strongly valued. Each player has a strictly defined role on defense, with a specific area of the playing field to cover. On offense, each player gets his turn to bat and all the players and spectators focus on the batter. Then again, perhaps baseball appeals to the community simply because the object of the game is to score by "coming home".  

Shawn Green, the best Jewish professional baseball player in a generation, has come home to his community. Green, 27, just signed a six-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team that will pay him $84 million. He is now the second-highest-paid player in the sport. 

An outfielder, Green played five years for the Toronto Blue Jays. During the last two years he established himself as one of the best players in the game, a powerful hitter and a top fielder. Before he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, he put a remarkable condition on any trade: it would have to be to a city with a large Jewish population. Los Angeles, with over a half-million Jews, fit the bill. 

The condition was remarkable because just a few years ago Green had little connection to the Jewish community. He grew up in a mostly non-Jewish Los Angeles suburb, and, while his parents are Jewish, he was not bar mitzvahed. He knew he was Jewish, but that was about it. 

Green's father, a gym coach who later became the owner of a baseball training facility, worked closely with him to improve his baseball skills. At the same time, his parents did not neglect his formal secular education. Green was a top student in high school and was admitted to Stanford University, one of the best schools in the country. He attended Stanford until the demands of his professional career made attending classes impossible. 

A wonderful thing happened after Green started playing for Toronto, when it became known that he was Jewish. The local Jewish community in every city he visited welcomed him. Green in turn became much more knowledgeable about his religion, and he realized he was a role model for many Jewish children. Green is not the first Jewish baseball player to play this role. In the 1930's, when anti-Semitism was everywhere, Detroit Tiger Hank Greenberg was one of the top players. Greenberg was a great player who was a total gentleman on and off the field. Even Jews who did not follow baseball knew about Greenberg and were proud of his accomplishments. After he retired, Greenberg told interviewers that, wherever he went, Jewish people told him how much he meant to them when they were children and that this admiration was terribly important to him. 

In the 1960's, the top pitcher in baseball was Brooklyn-born Sandy Koufax. Koufax, like Greenberg before him, is a quiet man who let his on-field accomplishments speak for him. Koufax is not a particularly observant Jew, but almost every Jewish baseball fan can recall the 1965 World Series, when Koufax refused to pitch in a game that fell on Yom Kippur. All across America, people who never heard of Yom Kippur became knowledgeable about the holiday. The manager of the opposing team joked, "I hope there are more Jewish holidays coming up soon". Famous Americans of every religion praised the way that Koufax honored his faith. 

Shawn Green, like Koufax and Greenberg, is a soft-spoken, thoughtful man. He recently stated that he too would decline to play on Yom Kippur if a game is scheduled on that date. He has recognized the importance of his role to the larger Jewish community. It should come as no surprise that he embraces the traditional Jewish value of "tikkun olam": to give back to the community. He has already committed himself to giving $1.5 million to a charity for poor children in Los Angeles. He plans to set up charitable foundations and has expressed a particular interest in Jewish charities. 

For three generations, the Jewish love affair with baseball has been cemented by a wonderful player who expresses the best human values on and off the field. Shawn Green is the player of this generation. 

If you want, check out Shawn’s official baseball statistics.

Additional Information

If you have any additional questions, please contact: editor@jewhoo.com.