So what’s gonna happen with this? Without appearing too much of a Kornheiser apologist, come on already. What, is he going to have to turn into Mr. Rogers now? Funny how people might find a personality who’s known for being a curmudgeon amusing until he turns his attention to them.

Does anyone really think Kornheiser wants motorists to actually run down bicyclists? It reminds me of the movie Twelve Angry Men in which Henry Fonda argues that phrases such as “I’m gonna kill you” shouldn’t always be taken as emmes.

Parents of (mostly) high school-aged students know that these offers come in the mail occasionally, playing to the emotions of those who want to give their children every opportunity to succeed (hidden motto: If you don’t spend oodles of money on these programs, you don’t love your kids and they will get into inferior colleges).

As the author of this piece in The Jerusalem Post notes, not every Jewish parent can afford to send their sons and daughters to these programs or, in this case, to the Maccabiah/Maccabi events. And that’s a shame. I’m sure there are lots of talented kids to would do well at the games, perhaps even those who have the benefits of private lessons and top-of-the-line gear, but can’t participate because they can’t cobble together the two or three grand necessary to attend. Some synagogues/JCCs/communities will hold a fundraiser here or there, but I think that’s the exception rather than the rule.

(Sorry for the JP format, it’s a bit hard to read through).

This article included reproductions of the forms from Willie Mays in 1951; Rocky Colavito (undated); Warren Spahn (1947); Bill Mazeroski (Jan. 2, but no year); Ted Williams (1939); and Roger Maris (1957). They asked for such information as hobbies, playing experience, name of spouse and children, etc.

What caught my eye was the space for “ancestry.”

The form changed over the years. In earlier versions, it was just a blank line for the player to fill in. Later on, there were a series of “check lines”:

___ English   ___ French  ___ German ___ Hebrew ___Irish  ___ Other

You get the idea. Mays wrote “Negro” on his blank line. Maz put down “Polish” in his “other” line; Williams wrote “Welsch/French,” neglecting to include his maternal Mexican heritage. Conspicuous by its absence: Italian. (Of course, there were practically no Latin America presence in those days.)

Maybe I’m being too sensitive, but one of these designations is not like the others.

Steve Gietschier, former senior managing editor of research at The Sporting News, said in an email

The Sporting News began the practice of distributing biographical questionnaires to major league players and prospects as part of the effort to publish the Baseball Register starting in 1940. As you know, each Register entry included not only stats but also biographical data, including such questions as: Hobbies, How Your Name is Pronounced, and Most Outstanding Achievement in Baseball.

Most players filled out the questionnaires. Some did so year after year. The early ones make for interesting reading.

When I started at TSN in 1986, we were no longer distributing questionnaires. The thinking was two-fold: first, we were getting the data we needed directly from the clubs, and second, modern players were simply not willing to fill out questionnaires.

Tim Wiles, director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown said

For much of the 20th century, the Hall of Fame sent very similar questionnaires to players, stopping sometime in the 1980s after the return rate plummeted in reverse proportion to player incomes…

Our questionnaires also have an ethnicity line, with some interesting results.

When I started here, Greg Maddux and Steve Carlton were the only guys to win 4 Cy Youngs.  While both are a bit iconoclastic and have senses of humor, they both list “Native American” as their ethnicity.

In a subsequent note, Wiles wrote, “It all comes down to: By whose definition? My favorite permutation is: Is Fergie Jenkins an African-American, even though he’s Canadian?

One of the many excellent contributions comes from Andrew Hazucha, a professor at Ottawa University (Kansas), who writes “Proselytizing Pastime: Appropriating Jesus at Coor Field.”

This isn’t new. We’ve heard about the encroachment of Baseball Chapel and its affect on non-Christian personnel for some time. But there was one line attributed the Colorado Rockies leadership that struck me as a bit queer. Team field manager Clint Hurdle is quoted as saying “We look for men of character, men of skills. That those have a common fabric with Christianity is not a coincidence.”

I have two comments:

• Is he saying that non-Christians do not have character?
• He might want to take a look at one of the mainstays of his pitching rotation last season. Jason Marquis won 15 games for the Rockies to help them win the National League Wild Card. Does Hurdle think Marquis — whose teams have never failed to make a post-season appearance since his debut in 2000 — is missing that attribute? Just curious (and perhaps a bit too sensitive).

Hey, Ronan, why don’t you tell Youkilis you don’t want him living next door?

According to his obituary in The New York Times:

Wittenberg had been a two-time wrestling champion at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, the international competition for Jewish athletes.

He visited Jerusalem before the 1972 Munich Olympics, giving pointers to the Israeli wrestling team. On the night of Sept. 4, 1972, Wittenberg and his wife, Edith, spent time at a Munich hotel with their friend Yosef Gutfreund, an Israeli wrestling referee.

The next day, Gutfreund and 10 fellow Israelis — athletes and coaches — were killed when Palestinian terrorists invaded the Olympic village.

“The whole concept of the Games was turned upside down,” Wittenberg told Newsday 20 years later. “It was murder for political reasons. People go to war and get killed, all right. The Olympics were fun.”

Receiving the gold medal. (Olympic Foto Association)

According to baseball-reference.com, only four Jamaican-born players – Chili Davis, Justin Masterson (1-7 with the Indians last year), Rolando Roomes, and Devon White — have made it to the Majors.

For those unfamiliar with the game, here’s a brief into:

Don’t ask me why, but the sport has always fascinated me and one of the activities at the Ritz Carlton was a mid-day game, so I just had to give it a go. It was actually scheduled twice, but the first day I was the only one to show up. Sniff-sniff, no one to play with. Better luck the next day, although three of the eight participants were kids.

Of course, those things can go on for hours, if not days. The regulation field is immense, so this was a very abbreviated version and played with a tennis ball rather than the traditional hard ball. The pitch (the area for the bowler and batter) was not well-placed; several balls went into the swimming pool and could have put an eye out.

Anyway, it wasn’t as much fun as I had hoped (I’m the chap in red, below), given the circumstances. The kids got a bit bored and, with all due modesty, I knew more about the rules than the staffer leading the activity.The whole thing was over in about a half-hour.

I know they have some sort of league at Watsessing Park; maybe it’s time to move up.

Had a chance to play a fair amount of tennis, which leads me to this story.

On the court I saw a gentleman wearing one of those Israeli campaign hats. We got to talking and I mentioned the paper and the blog and he told me a relative of his was a hot prospect in the Yankees farm system.

Sure enough, he was talking about Jeremy Bleich, a non-roster invitee at Spring Training.

Bleich is a 22-year-old left-handed pitcher who played for the Tampa Yankees and Trenton Thunder last year after making his pro debut in 2008. Overall, he’s 9-10 in his early career.

Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook lists him as the number nine prospect in the Yankees’ system. Not too shabby. He’s been in a couple of ST games, allowing no runs and one hit in 2/3 of an inning. He’ll probably start the season back in Trenton.

Bit of trivia: the New Orleans-born Bleich attended the same high school as Eli and Peyton Manning.

Lakers’ Artest has a head full of Hebrew

One of the top defenders in the NBA had the word “defense” inscribed in his hair in Hebrew, as well as in Japanese and Hindi.

Ron Artest, a forward for the Los Angeles Lakers, dyed his hair blonde and had the word “hagana” shaved and dyed in purple in his hair to match the team’s colors for the March 7 game against the Orlando Magic in Florida.

Artest reportedly asked his fans on Twitter over the weekend if he had the proper translation. Originally he had “hahagana,” but it was suggested that hagana would be better.

There was no word on whether Artest’s Jewish teammate, Jordan Farmar, weighed in on the translation.

In a rematch of last year’s championship teams, the Magic defeated the Lakers, 96-94.

Koufax with Dodgers manager Joe Torre. Photo by Jewish Journal

The Los Angeles Jewish Journal published this piece on Sandy Koufax’s appearance at a Feb. 27 fund-raiser for Joe Torre’s Safe at Home Foundation.

Koufax seems to be stepping out more recently. He’s always good for a visit to the Dodgers’ spring training camp, as well as the Mets, owner Fred Wilpon being an old friend. Then there’s his participation in the upcoming film documentary about Jews and baseball, due out this summer.

Maybe he’s changed his philosophy, like fellow Hall-of-Famer Willie Mays. For decades, Mays declined to authorize an “official” biography. But with the advancing years, he decided the time was right to share his story with his legion of fans, the result of which is James Hirsch’s excellent new book, Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend.

Koufax shared an interesting anecdote with the audience in which he

spoke of one famous start that never actually happened. In 1964, Phillies manager Gene Mauch called off a game, allegedly due to the light rain that fell that morning. Legend says Mauch actually called the game because Koufax was set to start. And as Koufax explained to the audience, the next time the Dodgers would be in Philadelphia that year was on Yom Kippur, when Mauch knew he wouldn’t play.

So that got me to thinking: Pretty much every Jewish baseball fan knows that Koufax skipped his assignment in Game One of the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins. But how many other late-season assignments did he miss because of the High Holy Days?

Seems like a trip to baseball-Reference.com/Retrosheet.org is in order.

Working with those sites and Hebcal.com, a perpetual Hebrew calendar website, I learned that Koufax, in fact, actually pitched twice on Yom Kippur.

In 1960, he tossed the seventh and eighth innings in a 10-8 loss to the Cubs on Oct. 1, a meaningless contest on the last day of the season. The next year he took his regular turn on Sept. 20 to beat the Cubs 3-2 in 13 innings, striking out 13, when the Dodgers were still in the hunt for the N.L. pennant. He might have taken off for Yom Kippur in 1966, his final campaign, but it’s difficult to make that attribution just from the paperwork, since he alternated between three and four days off that year. He beat the Phillies 11-1 on Sept. 20 and lost to the Cubs on Sept. 25, 2-1. Yom Kippur fell Sept. 23-24.

Perhaps he felt badly for pitching on the holiest day of the Jewish year; perhaps he took a lot of flack for it. Maybe it was the exaggerated spotlight of the World Series that made him decide not to take the ball for Game One.

Koufax appeared in four World Series: two games in 1959 against the Chicago White Sox; two in 1963 against the Yankees; three (!) against the Twins in ‘65, including the crucial 2-0 clincher on two days’ rest; and his last in 1966 against the Orioles. Other than Game One in ‘65, there were no holiday conflicts.

But hang on a minute, what’s this? Do we have a Neyer moment?

It seems questionable the event Koufax mentions could have taken as described.

The Dodgers had a poor season in 1964, and Koufax had his share of woes. According to Jews and Baseball, Volume 2 by Burton and Bonita Boxerman (McFarland), in an Aug. 8 game against the Milwaukee Braves

Koufax jammed his pitching arm while diving back to second base to beat a pick-off throw. He managed to win two more games in 1964. The morning after his nineteenth win, a shutout in which he fanned 13 batters, he could not straighten his left arm. The Dodgers’ team physician diagnosed his ailment as traumatic arthritis, and Koufax did not pitch the rest of the year. [emphasis added]

So here’s the thing: The morning after Koufax’s 19th win was Aug. 17, almost a month before Yom Kippur. So he would not have played when the Dodgers hosted a three-game series against the Phillies on Sept. 7-8 (doubleheader and single game) and visited Philadelphia for four games, Sept. 17-20 — just after Yom Kippur. (The Phillies hosted the Dodgers for a three-game set July 31-Aug. 2; Koufax beat the Pirates on Aug. 4. But there were no rainouts. Even if there had been, it’s hard to believe Mauch would have been ruminating the Dodgers’ pitching rotation more than a month ahead of time to see when Koufax’s turn would fall.)

So, as much as I hate to say it (damn you again, Neyer), and unless someone can show me otherwise, I have to call out Koufax on his claim.

Of course, Koufax does preface the anecdote with “Legend says….”

Regardless, his decision in 1965 remains the highlight of Jewish fans to this day.

Reading the Times this morning  (well, website, actually. But that doesn’t make me a bad person) and came across a item you can pretty much expect to read on the occasion of every Olympics for the past 30 years or so.

“(Host city) concerned over debt left behind by Games”

The first time I recall reading something like this was regarding the Summer Games in Montreal in 1976. According to some of my friends who still live there, the city it still paying taxes for that. Now it’s Vancouver’s turn.

It goes beyond money. According the the “Vancouver Journal” item by Ian Austen,

The average guy, who cannot easily afford Olympics tickets (even attending the medals ceremonies costs $21, plus service charges), has had other reasons to complain. The flaming caldron that Mrs. Lombardi admired was initially hidden behind a chain link fence that evoked a medium-security prison. And until local spirits were dampened by the Canadian hockey team’s loss to the United States, a large section of downtown was overrun nightly by boisterous, hollering celebrants, an astonishing number of whom were drunk.

Of course, no one can control the weather (yet), so it was unfortunate that the women’s Grand Slalom had to take place under such awful conditions yesterday. See for yourself.

The problem in this one is the media.

The teaser on Comcast.net read “Vonn crash anger Mancuso,” (Lindsey and Julia, respectively). But when you click on the link, you find a different headline: “Vonn’s crash disrupts Mancuso’s GM title defense,” wholly different connotations.

Short recap: Lindsey crash and was tangled in the side netting. Because the weather was so bad and officials wanted to get the day’s run in, the intervals between skiers were shortened from one minutes, 15 seconds, to one minute. Mancuso came out of chute properly and was pretty far into her run when a yellow flag was raised, forcing her too stop. The teaser makes it seem like she was blaming her rival. Yes, she was; no, she wasn’t. Blah blah blah. Read and decide.

Mancuso finished in 18th place. It’s a shame when circumstances beyond an athlete’s control rear their ugly faces.

I went to itunes to see if I could download the podcast for the Feb. 16 installment of The Tony Kornheiser Show in which he made his stormy comments. For some reason, it isn’t available. It’s there, but with “technical problems.” Nor can you download it from ThisShowStinks, the program’s official site.

Hmmm.

By the way, here’s the costume in question:

At least his website has a sense of humor about his two-week suspension:

The current issue of Sports Illustrated addresses it with the following, under the title “A Bar Mitzvah with a Real Mitzvah”:

ESPN has suspended Tony Kornheiser for two weeks for comments he made about Hannah Storm’s attire. Storm is a cohost of ESPN’s SportsCenter TV program.

Kornheiser and Storm

Kornhesier, who also cohosts  Pardon the Interruption (on ESPN), made the “offensive” remarks on his radio show on ESPN 980 in Washington DC late last week:

Hannah Storm in a horrifying, horrifying outfit today. She’s got on red go-go boots and a catholic school plaid skirt … way too short for somebody in her 40s or maybe early 50s by now. She’s got on her typically very, very tight shirt. She looks like she has sausage casing wrapping around her upper body … I know she’s very good, and I’m not supposed to be critical of ESPN people, so I won’t … but Hannah Storm … come on now! Stop! What are you doing? … She’s what I would call a Holden Caulfield fantasy at this point.

A very brief item on ESPN.com on the incident reads as follows:

ESPN has suspended “Pardon The Interruption” co-host Tony Kornheiser for two weeks following comments he made on his Washington-based radio show last week.

On his radio show, Kornheiser made critical comments about the wardrobe of morning “SportsCenter” co-anchor Hannah Storm.

ESPN executive vice president of content John Skipper released the following statement:

“Tony Kornheiser’s comments about Hannah Storm were entirely inappropriate. Hurtful and personal comments such as these are not acceptable and have significant consequences. Tony has been suspended from PTI for two weeks. Hannah is a respected colleague who has been an integral part of the success of our morning SportsCenter.”

Kornheiser apologized for the remarks on his radio show Friday.

At the risk of being ignorant — and I am ignorant in that I did not hear Kornheiser’s remarks myself — most of what I’m reading online and in emails makes this seem like a tempest in a teapot and the punishment certainly does not fit the “crime.” (I have seen Storm’s outfit, on the other hand. Kornheiser may have exaggerated a bit in his sartorial descriptions, but that’s like Randy on American Idol calling someone “pitchy”; it’s a matter of personal taste.)

Was what he said “hurtful and personal?” Depends on your perspective and how sensitive you choose to be. Let’s be clear here, we’re not talking about Imus, or Jimmy the Greek, or Al Campanis. There’s no racial or religious animosity here. It’s not even sexist really, since Kornheiser routinely comments on the wardrobe choices of his male colleagues as well (could be construed as age-ist? Kornheiser is 61 himself).

And — not to get him in any more trouble — but why is it all right for him to regularly ridicule the Today ’s Hoda Kotb, but this merits a suspension? Is it because he’s talking about an ESPN “product?” Did management have an ulterior motive?

This is his shitck. He’s loud, opinionated (but never vulgar), and no one is off limits (he was suspended in 2002 for remarks made against ESPN about the firing of a coworker). And if the suits in Bristol haven’t realized this in all the years Kornheiser has been in their employ, someone hasn’t been paying attention.

More on the situation here, here, and here. Even those who don’t care for Mr. Tony’s style feel compelled to defend him. In fact, I find it amusing that so many outlets that normally wouldn’t even look over their collective eyeglasses at this story are chiming in.

Of course, this could all just be a strategic ploy to garner ESPN some attention.

So why did it take so long for someone to come up with this idea?

And if that’s the case, how long before we see

Sometimes I watch the games and ponder that these are the best at what they do. Granted, it’s all relative to each other. That is, the Israeli ice dancing team of Alexandra and Roman Zaretsky might have finished 10th, but that’s still better than a good chunk of their competitors and eons beyond what the average Olympics viewer can even hope to accomplish.

It’s kind of like the worst player on a major league team. Regardless of just how bad he might be, he’s still better than you and I. Keep that in mind when you’re belittling the .191 batter in a major league game or the 12th man on an NBA team.