#1060 5/16/21 – Dear Phillies: Why I’m Suspending Following Baseball

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: In last week’s #1059, I said that if American Jewish organizations don’t make clear to Major League Baseball that its engagement with Black Lives Matter – which, per Temple U’s Prof. Hill, seeks to “dismantle” the “settler-colonial project” that’s Israel – is incompatible with American Jews’ support for the game, we grassroots American Jews will have to step up to the plate. 

This week I read [1] that Black Lives Matter of Los Angeles has just publicly voiced that same BLM Israel “colonialism” sentiment, and [2] that dozens of non-Orthodox American Jewish rabbinical [!] students have just issued a public letter “accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the ‘violent suppression of human rights’” (Jerusalem Post, Saturday).  I also encountered an 8/29/20 Times of Israel article, “’Black Lives Matter’, Declare Groups Representing Majority of US Jews in NYT Ad,” declaring “The Black Lives Matter movement is the current day Civil Rights movement in this country ….”     

Ok, grassroots American Jews:  Batter up.

Dear Phillies:  Why I’m Suspending Following Baseball

May 14, 2021

fanfeedback@phillies.mlb.com

Dear Fellow-Philadelphian Phillies:

I write to inform you why I’m suspending my following of the Phillies and major league baseball.

I was 10 years old in 1950, The-Year-the-Whiz-Kids-Won-the-Pennant.  You were our heroes.  I’d go with my Dad to see Phils’ games at Shibe Park (mostly vs. the Dodgers).  I lived through the catastrophe of 1964, but I had the pleasure of being at the exhibition game Roberts pitched for Baltimore and the left-field fans put up a sign (which you wrongly made them take down) “Mauch, You Manage Like Dolly Madison.”  (My Dad was at the All-Star game the A’s Bobby Shantz struck out Lockman, Robinson and Musial, and then it rained.  He wrote a letter about it to me at summer camp.)  We were there that Memorial Day at which Duke Snider allegedly made that fantastic catch of the line drive of Willie Jones.  (Ashburn, who knew a fair amount about playing center field, said he’d trapped it, but Snider called it one of the game’s great catches in his book.  Duke also said the Dodgers were one of the best teams ever, and by me he might have been right about that.)  Jim Bunning pitched a perfect game 6/21/64, the day I got married (you owe me four ushers).  I was with you all the way in 1980, not least when a foul popup popped out of Bob Boone’s glove and Pete Rose caught it.  Baseball was part of our lives.

But I must quote you two recent anti-Jewish homeland statements of Black Lives Matter, which MLB, including you, have endorsed.   Temple University’s Prof. Hill:

“… Black Lives Matter very explicitly is talking about the dismantling of, um, of the Zionist project, dismantling of a settler-colonial project and very explicitly embracing BDS on those grounds.”

BLM of LA:

“Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles stands in solidarity with Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and the West Bank.  We are a movement committed to ending settler colonialism in all forms and will continue to advocate for Palestinian liberation.  #SaveSheikhJarrah.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which fights anti-Semitism, succinctly answered:  “Don’t conflate US Domestic issues with other countries.  Jewish people’s connection to land of Israel goes back 3,000 years.  Indigenous people aren’t colonialists in their own land.”

My answer is a bit longer.  I wrote a book, Israel 3000 Years (Amazon), documenting British historian Parkes’ point that the Jewish Yishuv’s tenacious unbroken continued homeland presence all through the foreign empire-rule post-biblical centuries (“the Palestinians” have never ruled Palestine ever) wrote today’s Israelis’ “real title deeds.”  Btw, a majority of Israelis are of Mizrahi descent, the Jewish people stream that never left the Mideast.

For more on BLM’s anti-Jewish fervor, goto www.zoa.org, scroll down to “News” near the bottom and click on “The BLM Organization Files.”

This anti-Jewish homeland BLM activism, whatever motivates it, is incompatible with Jewish homeland-supporting American Jews’ following major league baseball.   For the past twenty years, I’ve done a weekly email to Israel supporters.  #1058, two weeks ago, appended, is titled “Bye Bye, Baseball.”  It’s my pitch to my subscribers who follow major league baseball to recognize MLB having made itself an accessory to BLM’s animosity to us and to step up to the plate.

Sincerely,

Jerome Verlin

PS:  Through a mutual friend, I had the opportunity some years ago to socialize a bit with two of your ball players.  They are wonderful guys and a credit to your organization.  Their names are Ruben Amaro.

[I received an auto-acknowledgement my email had been received and would be addressed.]

= = = = =

Alert #1058, 5/2/21

Bye-Bye, Baseball

A long time ago in a Philadelphia now far, far away, a candy store stood across the street from a remarkable public educational institution, the Henry School in West Mt. Airy.  A little kids’ size table sat out in front, with two little kid-size chairs, at which two little kids could sit and discuss affairs of the day over Cokes.  I sat there one afternoon across from a Black schoolmate I hardly knew, so I asked him over Cokes that key kid-identification question we all used:  “Do you root for the Phillies or the A’s?”  His reply was so outside my own range of answers I recall it to this day, three-quarters of a century later.  “I root,” he said, “for the Dodgers.”  But even at that little-kid age, I understood where he was coming from, faster than you can say “Jackie Robinson.”

I knew that my schoolmate wasn’t alone.  In my Henry School years, I would go with my Dad to Shibe Park, Twenty-first and Lehigh, to Phils’ games.  Half the people in the half-empty ball park were Black, and, at Twenty-first and Lehigh in Philly, they rooted for Brooklyn.  Robinson was a self-respect-generating hero for them, that in an analogous way Hank Greenberg – who’d put his arm around Jackie when they met at first base Hank’s last year at Pittsburgh – had been for American Jews at a time and place American Jews had really really needed a hero.  That Pittsburgh moment was one of two minority groups’ mutual understanding I wish we had back today.  We could be of help to each other.

By me, baseball died, not as a business, but as “America’s pastime” the day the Giants and Dodgers deserted New York.  But if you don’t think that before then Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers had contributed mightily to Americans more closely attaining the just societal values toward which we strive, read Jackie Robinson’s book, Baseball Has Done It.  It’s about the integration of baseball, yes, but more fully the impact baseball’s integration had on ending Jim Crow that had plagued America well into Jackie Robinson’s lifetime and mine.  Three of my half-dozen American heroes are ball players, two of them Black – Greenberg, Robinson and Satchel Paige, by light-years the best pitcher ever and symbol of all that America lost through discriminating against Black Americans.

But that was then, as they say, and this is now.  What brought back to my mind this week all of this “then” was one of my friend Alan Molod’s frequent emails.  It was a brief video of what’s officially one of “The Top 100 Moments in Major League Baseball” of Chicago Cubs outfielder Rick Monday April 25, 1976, running in from center field to snatch from two attempted American flag burners who’d run onto the field that about-to-be-burned American flag.  The scoreboard lit up “Rick Monday You Made a Great Play,” and the fans stood up and sang “God Bless America.”  Seeing that video this week got to me.

What else has gotten to me recently is a ZOA report of Temple University Prof. Hill’s statement of the aims of the group Black Lives Matter, for which he’s an advocate.  ZOA quoted Prof. Hill stating:

“… Black Lives Matter very explicitly is talking about the dismantling of, um, of the Zionist project, dismantling of a settler-colonial project and very explicitly embracing BDS on those grounds.”

It was that ZOA report of Prof. Hill on Black Live Matter’s ambition of “dismantling” our people’s “settler-colonial project” that precipitated BSMW #1056 two weeks ago.  It summarized our people’s uninterrupted three-millennia homeland-claiming physical presence in our homeland of Israel, not just during biblical times but also during the eighteen hundred years of exclusively foreign empire rule between Roman destruction of ancient Jewish Judaea in CE 135 and Israel’s independence in 1948 as the land of Israel’s next native state.  Historian Parkes credited that continued homeland presence, maintained “in spite of every discouragement,” with writing today’s Israelis’ “real title deeds.”  Indeed, the biggest segment of Israel’s population is Mizrahi Jews, descendants of those who never left the Mideast.  No nation on earth is further removed from being a “settler-colonial project” than my people’s three-millennia Jewish homeland of Israel.

ZOA’s response to Prof. Hill called that BLM Israel-dismantling aim what it is:

“The deliberate mischaracterization of Israel as a colonialist ‘settler’ state is part of an antisemitic smear used to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.  According to the ‘working definition of anti-Semitism’ provided by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) – a definition adopted and endorsed by the United States State Department under the Biden administration – this form of rhetoric is ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,’ an example of antisemitism.  In addition, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement has been criticized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who have stated that ‘BDS advocates employ antisemitic rhetoric and narratives to isolate and demonize Israel.’”   [emphasis added]

For more on “BLM’s Antisemitic Activities,” in depth, go to www.zoa.org, scroll down to “News” toward the home screen bottom, and click on “The BLM Organization Files.”

Major league baseball has endorsed Black Lives Matter.  E.g., an April 3 New York Times article, “Activism was Unusual for Baseball, but Not for Sports,” said that at the start of the shortened season last year, major league baseball had

“provided Black Lives Matter shirts for players to wear, and teams were allowed to paint a BLM logo on the back of the pitcher’s mound – an unmistakable sign of solidarity for television viewers.”

Google “MLB BLM” to see how widespread and deep baseball’s involvement with Black Lives Matter has become.

I disagree that “systemic racism” – e.g., Jim Crow, “Separate but Equal” – still plagues America today.  Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers played a major role in ending that terrible stain.  I honor them for it.  And it’s not MLB’s endorsement of BLM per se that drives me away from following the game.  It’s MLB’s endorsement of a BLM that for whatever reason – antisemitism of its own, uncritical acceptance of anti-Jewish/anti-Jewish homeland propaganda, just-plain-bullying – seeks to “dismantle” my people’s three-millennia homeland as a “settler-colonial project” that drives me away.  If BLM genuinely purges itself of that, MLB would cease to be an accessory to “dismantling” my people’s historic homeland – through verbal attack, economic embargo, potentially more.  But of course I’m not holding my breath waiting for BLM to divest itself of “dismantling” Israel, or MLB to divest itself of BLM, before the Messiah comes.  So, given that reality, which as Stu would say, sets my political position on this, all I can say right now is – Baseball, Bye-Bye.