In The Baseball Talmud, Howard Megdal uses sabermetrics and humor to answer once and for all the question of who was the greatest Jewish player of all time–Hank Greenberg or Sandy Koufax? (According to Megdal, it’s Greenberg by a hair.) Megdal has a good sense of humor and a nice writing style. How can you not like a guy who writes things like: “Right field is the Jewish people’s deepest position. If a baseball diamond were America, right field would be New York City. If a baseball team’s roles were professional organizations, right field would be the American Bar Association?” It’s not giving anything away to say that his top 10 are (in order): Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax, Lou Boudreau, Shawn Green, Buddy Myer, Sid Gordon, Ken Holtzman, Harry Danning, and Mike Lieberthal. After that, Megdal goes position-by-position to assemble the all-time Jewish All-Star team and estimate how they would fare against some of the greatest teams in baseball history, from the 1906 Chicago Cubs to the 1998 New York Yankees. He doesn’t give the team a name, but he ought to call them the Kosher Krushers. All in all, a fun read for baseball fans of any denomination (including non-believers).
Don’t judge a book by its cover, judge it by baseball’s magic numbers:
page 27
line 9
words 3: “(Norm) Sherry went on”
The Baseball Talmud
Howard Megdal
Harper Collins, 978-0-06-155843-6, sftcvr $22.99
Baseball Books 