[On
June 1, 1916, Louis Brandeis was confirmed to the Supreme Court, becoming
the first
Jewish American Justice. So this week I’ll highlight the American stories
of Brandeis and four other exemplary Jewish Americans, leading up to a special
weekend tribute to one of our best Jewish Studies scholars!]
On why we should
better remember one of the first and greatest Jewish American athletes.
Like Jackie
Robinson, in whose story Greenberg played a small but important role (on which
more below), Henry “Hank”
Greenberg wouldn’t need anything outside of his baseball talents and
successes to be remembered as a titan of the sport. One of the greatest sluggers in
baseball history, in an era when home runs were pretty hard to come by (and
despite losing four prime years of his career to military service, on which
more below), Greenberg was a two-time AL MVP in his nine seasons with the
Detroit Tigers (1933-1940 and 1945-1946), a four-time AL home run champion,
holds the American League record for the most RBIs in a single season (183, in
only 154 games), and was the first player to hit 25 or more home runs in a
single season in both leagues (doing so with Pittsburgh in the NL in 1947, his
final season in baseball, at the age of 36), among many other accomplishments. He
was elected to the Baseball
Hall of Fame in 1956, and again, should be remembered first and foremost as
one of his sport’s premier stars for a decade.
Yet also like
Robinson, Greenberg was a pioneer as well as a star: the first
Jewish American baseball player, and the first Jewish American star in any
of the major sports. One of four children of David and Sarah Greenberg,
Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Romania who owned a New York textile plant,
Greenberg was born Hyman Greenberg in Greenwich Village in 1911. Although he
was not denied entrance to the major leagues because of his ethnicity (indeed,
he made his debut at 19, the youngest player in the league at the time),
Greenberg did face persistent bigotry and discrimination; in one particularly
striking incident, during the
1935 World Series an umpire had to clear out the entire Chicago Cubs dugout
because they would not stop yelling anti-Semitic slurs. Moreover, his religion
and culture presented unique challenges over the course of his career, as
exemplified by his
famous 1934 decision not to play in a game on Yom Kippur; he balanced that
decision by choosing to play on Rosh Hashanah, in a game in which he hit two
home runs and led the Tigers to a 2-1 victory, and Detroit Free Press columnist Edgar Guest
honored Greenberg’s talents and Yom Kippur decision with a celebratory
poem.
Greenberg was
more than just a star and a pioneer, however; he was also an inspiring
American, on multiple levels. Most obvious, and certainly noteworthy, was his
World War II service: initially deemed 4F for flat feet, Greenberg
requested a reexamination and was allowed to enlist in 1940; when he was
honorably discharged a year later due to age, he re-listed; and by the war’s
end he had served a total of 47 months, the longest of any major leaguer. Yet
just as inspiring were some of Greenberg’s deeply American moments on the
homefront. Not only was he one of the only opposing
players to welcome Jackie Robinson to the majors in 1947 (Greenberg’s last
season), Robinson
also credited Greenberg specifically with helping him through that
particularly challenging first season. And long after their retirements,
Greenberg and Robinson were two of the only players (past or present) to
testify on behalf of Curt Flood’s efforts to eliminate the reserve clause,
efforts that led to the creation of free agency and a far more equitable system
for players. For all these reasons, I would put Hank Greenberg alongside Jackie
Robinson as two of baseball’s most influential and inspiring as well as
greatest stars.
Last journey
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Jewish Americans you’d highlight?
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