Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

Bat­ter up! With spring train­ing under­way and base­ball sea­son fast approach­ing, we have a few ​“Jews and Base­ball” titles to throw your way:

Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Base­ball, Rebec­ca T. Alpert (July 2011, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press)
A look at the many-faceted rela­tion­ship between Jews and black base­ball in Jim Crown America

Pitch­ing in the Promised Land: A Sto­ry of the First and Only Sea­son in the Israel Base­ball League, Aaron Prib­ble (April 2011, Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka Press)
Israel’s only sea­son of pro­fes­sion­al base­ball boast­ed an unfor­get­table cast of char­ac­ters: a DJ/​street artist third base­man from teh Brox, a wild­man catch­er from Aus­tralia, the jour­ney­men Domini­cans who were much old­er than they claimed to be, and even Sandy Koufax

Hank Green­berg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One , Mark Kurlan­sky (March 2011, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press)
Kurlan­sky explores the truth behind the slugger’s leg­end: his Bronx boy­hood, his spec­tac­u­lar dis­ci­pline as an aspir­ing ballplay­er, the com­plex­i­ty of his deci­sion not to play on Yom Kip­pur, and the cul­tur­al con­text of vir­u­lent anti-Semi­tism in which his career played out

Ham­merin’ Hank Green­berg, Shel­ley Som­mer (March 2011, Boyds Mill Press)
Young adults, 10 and up, will be able to enjoy this biog­ra­phy of Hank Green­berg, which includes archival photos

Lip­man Pike: America’s First Home Run King, Richard Michel­son; Zachary Pullen, illus. (Feb­ru­ary 2011, Sleep­ing Bear Press)
Award-win­ning author Richard Michel­son chron­i­cles the mete­oric rise of one of baseball’s ear­li­est (and unsung) champions