2500 Jewish Homers and Counting
Posted by Sean Forman on August 21, 2008
This is a guest post from Martin Abramowitz, creator to the Jewish Ballplayers card set.
Ian Kinsler has hit the 2500th homer by a Jewish player in the history of the Game. The historic blow came in the 9th inning off Scott Kazmir on May 26 this season. The Texas second-baseman, who was leading the American League in hits and runs this season before going on the DL on August 18, also hit number 2499 a day earlier, this one coming off C.C. Sabbathia at Cleveland. Getting a good start toward the next milestone, Ryan Braun hit number 2501 May 30 against the Astros.
These calculations were reported yesterday by Jewish Major Leaguers, Inc., a Boston-based not-for-profit organization which produces Jewish baseball cards as part of its mission to "document American Jews in America's Game. The Kinsler/Braun milestones will be commemorated in next season's cards. When asked to explain the three-month delay in reporting this historic finding, Jewish Major Leaguers President Martin Abramowitz could only respond, "it took a while to comb through all of Baseball-Reference.Com's box-scores."
Overall, coming into the 2008 season Jewish players had tallied 2, 467 of the 245, 898 homers hit since the 1870's. "That happens to be almost precisely one percent of all home runs, while 158 Jewish players were about nine-tenths of one percent of the roughly 16,700 players who have played the game, so we've clearly held our own..and with Kinsler,Braun, Youkilis, Kapler, and Ausmus this year, the prospects are encouraging."
August 21st, 2008 at 10:30 am
The next question is: how many wins do Jewish pitchers have?
August 21st, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Why would it take 3 months to total the number of HRs?!?
August 21st, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Can someone please confirm that Braun is not Jewish, because he gave an interview before the season starting that he was not Jewish, and he said he did not appreciate the nickname "Hebrew Hammer" and actually would rather be called the "Hurricane".
I also found this link.
http://www.jewishaz.com/issues/story.mv?071012+braun
and
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Ryan_Braun_(braunry02)
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:10 am
The Israeli Supreme Court has problems deciding who is a Jew, so you won't be surprised to know that no two lists of Jewish major leaguers agree completely. Given that, I think the 2500 number should be taken with a grain of (kosher!) salt.
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:13 am
In my experience, people's definitions of who is Jewish vary widely. I have known people who consider themselves Jewish but whom are not considered Jewish by others. Some people say the only thing that matters is whether a person's mother is/was Jewish--if so, then you are Jewish (whether you practice or not), and if not, then you are not Jewish (again, whether you practice or not.) I find the whole thing a bit tiresome--personally I like to accept whatever any person says is their own religion and not try to force people into boxes.
In Ryan Braun says he's not Jewish, for whatever reason, then in my book he's not Jewish, regardless of whether his mother was Jewish, whether he was Bar Mitzvahed, etc. Similarly, if he says he's Jewish, then in my book he is.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Thank You Andy.
I was born into a family with a Jewish name, but really do not choose to have any part of that (or any other) religion. However my last name is one that is universally considered to be Jewish. Other than getting out of a speeding ticket from a Jewish Cop once; I generally pull away from anyone who wants to give me preferential treatment because they think I am a jew.
I don;t see the purpose of this list, any more than I would approve of one that counted up the HR's of everyone from Hank Aaron to CC Sabathia
as "black HR's" or everyone from Ty Cobb to Ty Wigginton as "white home runs".
I rememebr hearing how Orlando Cepeda (I think it was him) set the HR record for Latino players. To me that was another useless statistic.
If people turned on SportsCenter tomorrow and heard "The Angels beat the Twins 8 to 4 and the Angels scored 5 black runs, 2 latino runs and a Caucasian run to the Twins 3 white runs and black run"; everyoone would be rightly up in arms. How is a tabulation of Jewish HR's much different then that?
September 1st, 2008 at 1:37 pm
In the big scheme of things, I don't think it really matters. However, for these guys, I think it's a matter of their own cultural pride. I'm fine with them doing it because I know it really isn't that big a deal.