An ode to perhaps the greatest Jewish baseball player on Passover

CNN —

Today is the first full day of what was my favorite Jewish celebratory holiday as a kid: Passover, which commemorates the Jews escaping bondage in ancient Egypt.

This time for celebration helped to remind me of a conversation I had a month ago with my friend Noam in which I said, “Hank Greenberg would have been a top-100 baseball player had it not been for World War II.”

Noam expressed some skepticism, so I decided to dig into the numbers. It turns out that I undersold Greenberg; he was one of the greatest hitters of all time and gives Sandy Koufax a run at being the greatest Jewish baseball player of all time.

Mar 26, 2024; Anaheim, California, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani (17) waits on deck in the third inning against the Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium.

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For those that don’t know, Greenberg was the first truly big Jewish sports star in America. He faced a lot of abuse at a time when Hitler was rising to power in Europe. Long before Koufax sat out for Yom Kippur, Greenberg did so for the Detroit Tigers during the 1934 pennant race. Yom Kippur is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar when adherents atone for their sins of the past year and don’t eat for the day.

Greenberg’s religion had already made front-page news when the Detroit Free press had, about a week earlier, run a large headline in Hebrew – probably the first time a major English-speaking newspaper ever did – when he played on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year). The headline was complimentary: “And so to you, Mr. Greenberg, the Tiger fans say, ‘L’shana Tova Tikatevu!’ which means ‘Happy New Year.’”

Greenberg deserved that