A Jewish Baseball Event So Rare That It’s Only Happened 3 Times Before
The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Philadelphia Phillies 11-1 in Phoenix on Saturday night, but Jewish fans might care less about the outcome than about a rare phenomenon in baseball history — an all-Jewish battery.
Phillies Jewish pitcher Max Lazar made his major-league debut in the bottom of the 7th inning, throwing to Jewish catcher Garrett Stubbs, and got Kevin Newman to fly out to right field to end the inning. He returned in the 8th inning and retired all three batters, including Joc Pederson, who struck out.
Pederson’s at-bat added another rare historic moment — a Jewish hitter facing a Jewish pitcher and Jewish catcher. The Diamondbacks’ designated hitter has been red hot in August, hitting .346 with four homers and eight RBIs, but Lazar whiffed him on a 93 mph fastball.
“I’m sure having Joc Pederson as your first strikeout is probably a cool one to have on the mantle,” Stubbs said after the game.
Lazar is the 15th Jewish player on a major league roster this season. Last season, 19 Jews played in the big leagues — the highest number in baseball history. There are currently 30 Jews playing in the minor leagues, 12 of them at the Triple-A level, according to Jewish Baseball News.
Since 1901, 188 identifiable Jews have played in the majors, comprising about 1% of the roughly 19,000 big league players over that period. So it’s rare that a team will have more than one Jewish player, or that a manager will put an all-Jewish battery on the field.
Aside from Saturday’s Lazar-Stubbs combination, it has only happened eight times before. These include Harry Feldman and Harry Danning on the New York Giants in 1941 and 1942, brothers Larry and Norm Sherry for the 1959-62 Los Angeles Dodgers, Sandy Koufax and Norm Sherry during those same four seasons, Saul Rogovin and Joe Ginsberg with the Detroit Tigers in 1950 and 1951, Jason Hirsh and Brad Ausmus on the 2006 Houston Astros, Craig Breslow and Ryan Lavarnway with the 2012 Red Sox, Eli Morgan and Lavarnway playing for the 2021 Cleveland Indians, and Bubby Rossman and Stubbs with the Phillies in 2022.
There are no records of Jews who played in the minors, but there have certainly been all-Jewish batteries in those leagues. One occurred in 1936. The Brooklyn Dodgers had assigned pitcher Sam Nahem to its minor league club, the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Brooks in the Class-A New York-Pennsylvania League. Nahem was a Jewish player from Brooklyn who had dropped out of Brooklyn College to play professional baseball.
In Allentown, he used an alias, Sam Nichols, perhaps to avoid facing antisemitism but also to maintain his eligibility as an amateur athlete in case he didn’t succeed as a professional athlete and wanted to return to play in college.
But his secret wasn’t very well-hidden. Several newspapers that covered the Allentown team identified him as a New York Jew. A column in the Allentown Call, for example, noted that “The Allentown Brooks this season may have one of the rarities of organized baseball, an all-Jewish battery,” explaining that the team’s catcher, Jim Smilgoff is “of Hebraic extraction” while Nichols is “also of Jewish parentage.”
The story noted: “Don’t say that we told you, but Sam Nichols answers to the name of Hassel Naham when the tax collector comes around over in Brooklyn,” misidentifying his first name and misspelling his last name.
Even rarer than an all-Jewish battery is a trifecta, where a Jewish batter comes to the plate to face a Jewish pitcher throwing to a Jewish catcher, as happened on Saturday when Lazar pitched to Joc Pederson with Stubbs calling signals.
We know of only three other such incidents. On May 2, 1951, Saul Rogovin was pitching for the Tigers, Joe Ginsberg was catching, and Lou Limmer came to bat for the Philadelphia Athletics. On August 14, 2013, Red Sox pitcher Craig Breslow struck out the Blue Jays’ Kevin Pillar, with Ryan Lavarnway behind the plate. On June 22, 2021, Lavarnway was catching when the Indians’ Jewish pitcher, Eli Morgan faced Joc Pederson, then with the Cubs, three times.
What major league teams have had the most Jews? In Sid Gordon’s first major league game, on Sept. 11, 1941, the Giants put four Jewish players on the field: Morrie Arnovich, Harry Feldman, Harry Danning, and Gordon. That number has never been surpassed. The 1946 Giants had five Jewish players, but they were never all on the field at the same time.
On Aug. 8, 2005, the Red Sox set an American League record when three Jewish players (Kevin Youkilis, Adam Stern, and Gabe Kapler) took the field at the same time. The following year, Jewish pitcher Craig Breslow joined the Red Sox, setting an AL record of four Jews on the same roster. Breslow, Youkilis, and Kapler tied the record by playing at the same time in several games, but Stern never played when Breslow was pitching.
What about Jewish pitching duels? In 1966, the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax and the Cubs’ Ken Holtzman were scheduled to pitch on Yom Kippur but both told their managers that they wouldn’t play. The following day, Sept. 25, Koufax lost a 2-1 game to Holtzman. Both pitched complete games. Holtzman had a no-hitter going into the 9th inning, but gave up two hits in that final inning. Koufax gave up four hits.
Since then, Jewish starting pitchers have faced off four times: On June 20, 1971, Giants pitcher Steve Stone started against the Padres’ Dave Roberts. As a Yankee, Holtzman started a game against Roberts (then with the Tigers) on Sept. 24, 1976. The two of them faced off again on June 22, 1977. The Braves’ Max Fried battled the Orioles’ Dean Kremer on May 5, 2023.
Here’s one more rare Jewish combination: In the second inning of game six of the 2021 World Series, the Astros’ Alex Bregman hit a pitch from Braves pitcher Max Fried to right field. Outfielder Joc Pederson caught the ball.
On Sept. 18, 1996, near the Jewish High Holidays, the Milwaukee Brewers hosted the Toronto Blue Jays at County Stadium. When Shawn Green game to bat, he greeted Jesse Levis, Milwaukee’s Jewish catcher, with a friendly “L’shana tova,” Hebrew for happy new year.
Then, to Green and Levis’ surprise, home plate umpire Al Clark, offered his own, “L’Shana tova.”
Clark had grown up as an Orthodox Jew.
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
Peter Dreier is professor of politics at Occidental College who writes for The Nation, American Prospect, Talking Points Memo, Dissent, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications.. Among his eight books are Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements that Shook Up the Game and Change America and The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame.