Baseball’s Forgotten Jew-Haters
Â
Herb Rogoff of Hudson, N.Y., an artist and lecturer on the arts, is also an authority on baseball, having published a magazine on the subject for many years. Back issues are now in the Hall of Fame.
He writes:
 “What Major League baseball in general has done is play up the hardships that black ballplayers like Jack Robinson endured in becoming part of the Major League scene. At the same time, organized baseball has almost totally ignored the anti-semitism that Jewish players experienced trying to break into baseball.Â
Â
Get The Jewish Standard Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up
“People like Hank Greenberg, Kenny Holtzman, Lou Limmer, Joe Nathan Ginsberg, Moe Berg, Jimmy Reese, Sid Gordon, Harry and Ike Danning, and even Sandy Koufax (initially) and many others went through the same kind of horrors that Jackie Robinson suffered. But you don’t read about it. I’ve interviewed Ginsberg, Holtzman, Reese, Limmer, and Danning, and what they told me about their early days in the game are as frightening as the things you hear about what happened to Robinson. Â
“People like Leo Durocher, Jimmy Dykes, Virgil Trucks, Neal Berry, Harvey Haddix, Eddie Sawyer, Danny Litwhiler, Thurman Munson, Eddie Joost, Bob Dillinger, Pete Sudor, and Ed Pelligrini joined in the chorus of ballplayers who were vicious in what they said and did against the Jewish ballplayers I named. Â
“Billy Martin, former manager of the New York Yankees, was among the very worst.”Â
comments