Birthday greetings

Shawn Green, former Blue Jay, Dodger, Diamondback, and Met, turns 36 today.

It’s a bit early to tell, but could Green be the last of the high-level Jewish players to concern himself with playing on the High Holy Days? The first and foremost, of course, was Hank Greenberg. A generation later, it was Sandy Koufax, and then Green.

Today’s crop of superstars include Ryan Braun, Kevin Youkilis, and ian Kinsler. But none of them have been “tested” by the schedule as have their forebears. Youkilis dodged the bullet when his Red Sox were eliminated by the Tampa Bay Rays for the American League pennant, thereby rendering a possible Yom Kippur game moot.

Time will tell, but I’m guessing — with the very rare exception — that abstaining from play on Yom Kippur is a thing of the past. Even though Green took off one year, Greenberg was brought up in an Orthodox household and at a time when it would have been a shande for a nice Jewish boy to sully the religion by participating in any kind of work, let alone a game on the holiest day of the year.

Although he wasn’t raised in such an observant environment, the tenor of the times still held for Koufax, hence his choice to pass up on the opening game of the 1965 World Series. And I’m cynically guessing that had Green played in a market with fewer Jews — say the Colorado Rockies rather than the Los Angeles Dodgers — he might not have come under such scrutiny over his own decision.

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Today is also the birthday of Harry Feldman, a native New Yorker who pitched for the Giants from 1941-46. His best season cam in 1945 when he was 12-13 with a 3.27 in 271.3 innings. The Giants finished fourth that year with a record of 78-74. He was among the players rejected for military service because of a lung condition.

Feldman was among the major leaguers who “jumped” to the Mexican League in the days when players were still bound to their teams by the reserve clause. He thought better of it and quit after dealing with conditions south of the border. As punishment for their “disloyalty,” Feldman and the other players were banned for a time from returning to the majors. he pitched for the San Francisco Seals in the Pacific Coast League in 1949 and 1950, retiring in 1951. Feldman died of a heart attack at the age of 42 in 1962.

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Kaplan’s Korner on Jews and Sports © 2008 New Jersey Jewish News

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