There's No Crying in Baseball

After a promising come-from-behind win against Nicaragua, Team Israel followed up with three consecutive losses to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic tournament. The good news is that at 1:3 they get an automatic invitation to the next baseball classic three years from now.

"Pulling the team together took a combination of personal cajoling, a widely respected manager, Jewish geography and an effort to tap — and ignite — the sometimes embryonic Jewish identities of players who hadn’t given much thought to how their Jewish roots and baseball prowess might be combined," reports JTA in "How Israel built its most talented baseball roster ever for the 2023 World Baseball Classic."

And while we are on baseball, former star Darryl Strawberry is now an evangelical preacher focused on promoting Israel. "Strawberry, 60, was a New York sports icon in the 1980s as a leading member of the 1986 World Series champion Mets. With a picturesque, looping swing, the lanky 6-foot-6 outfielder could both hit for power and show off speed on the bases, drawing early predictions from sports analysts that he was destined to be an all-time great." He played in the first baseball game I ever attended in 1985 at Shea Stadium.