Archive of the Day: 18 Greatest Jewish Ballplayers
1 April 2010
In honor of Passover, the Archive of the Day is a 2007 piece on the 18 greatest Jewish baseball players of all-time, for Salon.com. Ryan Braun and Kevin Youkilis have both raised their standing considerably since this came out, and Ian Kinsler’s on his way up too.
You can never go wrong with an old “Airplane” joke:
“Would you like something to read?”
“Do you have anything light?”
“How about this leaflet, ‘Famous Jewish Sports Legends.’”
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So the question becomes, how far has Ryan Braun moved up this list with only 2 additional seasons under his belt? It’s got to be a few spots, right?
Larry, Braun definitely moves up considerably. So does Youkilis. The peak vs. career debate was nearly as tough to parse for this article as the “mother isn’t Jewish, so is he REALLY Jewish?” debate.
Good list. I probably would drop Ausmus no matter how good his defense was and consider Cal Abrams, Mike Epstein or Joel Horlen instead. Maybe even Larry Sherry or Art Shamsky.
Actually, you can create a very competitive 25 man roster of all Jewish ballplayers.
Agreed. And then of course we have Mo Berg, who couldn’t hit a lick, but was off the charts for intangibles, and espionage.
Using current style AL rosters, what do you think of this team?
Carew: 2B
Boudreau: SS
Braun: LF
Greenburg: 1B
Green: RF
Rosen: 3B
Kauff: CF
Blomberg: DH
Danning: C
Bench:
Lieberthal
Kinsler
Youklis
Gordon
SP: Koufax
SP: Holtzman
SP: Horlen
SP: Roberts
SP: Marquis
RP: Latman
RP: Levine
RP: Radinsky
RP: Grabow
RP: Schoenweiss
RP: Breslow
CL: Sherry
I haven’t really thought much about the lineup order or the best distribution of bench slots or lefty/righty splits. So there might be other choices such as Elliott Maddox to get a real center fielder or any number of real shortstops. Similarly there are quite a few worthy pitchers to consider either for the rotation (Feldman, Pelty, Mayer) or in relief.
That’s a damn fine team! I’d get Youkilis in there (Greenberg to DH, Blomberg to the bench), but otherwise, that looks spot on.