יום חמישי, י׳ תמוז תשפ״וThursday, June 25, 2026
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Author, columnist, public speaker Irwin Cohen headed a national baseball publication for five years before accepting a front office position with the Detroit Tigers where he became the first orthodox Jew to earn a World Series ring. Besides the baseball world, Irwin served in the army reserves and was a marksman at Ft. Knox, Ky., and Chaplain's Assistant at Ft. Dix, NJ. He also served as president of the Agudah shul of the Detroit community for three decades. He may be reached in his dugout at irdav@sbcglobal.net.
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By Irwin Cohen
Of all the audiences I’ve spoken to, the Boynton Beach guys were among the best informed on baseball history and trivia.
By Irwin Cohen
I had many conversations with Rusty, who was considered baseball's most eligible bachelor, while on the baseball beat.
By Irwin Cohen
I was lucky enough to be on the baseball beat in the 1970s when many of Babe Ruth's former teammates were still alive.
By Irwin Cohen
On the other side of New York, the Mets, unlike the Yankees, don't have the young bats to excite the fans. However, a Mets farmhand led the minor leagues in home runs in 2018.
By Irwin Cohen
The 1968 baseball season was especially memorable because it was the last time a pitcher won 30 games and because it saw the end of Mickey Mantle's playing career.
By Irwin Cohen
The war affected America’s national pastime in several ways. Rubber was in short supply, so games in the 1943 season used a baseball with less rubber. The new ball resulted in low-scoring games...
By Irwin Cohen
The very first All-Star Game I ever saw was in 1950, a few weeks after our family got its first television. That was the year I started following baseball and collecting baseball cards.
By Irwin Cohen
Cleveland was the center of the baseball universe in 1948, and Hank Greenberg was the spiffiest dresser in its front office.
By Irwin Cohen
The coliseum could house over 100,000 fans. On Opening Day the Dodgers drew 78,672 paying fans – almost double what their beloved former home, Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, could accommodate.
By Irwin Cohen
I always seemed to end up with, what they call in card-collecting circles, "commons." To me, Ed Mayer was even less than a common.
By Irwin Cohen
The rivalry between fans of the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees will heat up as the season progresses.
By Irwin Cohen
Those of us who winter in the Orthodox enclave of Century Village in West Palm Beach are lucky to be so close to Florida's finest baseball facility, which boasts many stars and superstars.
By Irwin Cohen
I have many memories of him talking to Ralph Branca, who also pitched for the Tigers in the mid-fifties.
By Irwin Cohen
Jake Pitler was a caring Jew who agonized over the plight of his fellow Jews on the other side of the ocean as he continued his baseball career.
By Irwin Cohen
Wilson had no problem finding whiskey during Prohibition and drank most of his money until his wallet was dry.
By Irwin Cohen
I enjoyed watching the Yankees this year with their young players like Judge and Gary Sanchez.
By Irwin Cohen
Events morphed into what became known as the Six-Day War. While the war lasted less than a week, millions of words were devoted to it in newspapers and magazines over the days and weeks that followed.
By Irwin Cohen
My father would have taken us to the game but I declined because the Dodgers would soon leave Brooklyn and Ebbets Field would no longer house a major league team, so who cared?
By Irwin Cohen
While American Jews were leaving the baseball field for military bases, Jews on the other side of the ocean were being targeted by the Nazis.
By Irwin Cohen
I followed Evers religiously and so I thought it was an act of sacrilege that Bunning wore Evers's uniform number while with the Tigers.
By Irwin Cohen
Once a year in the spring, Bookstock takes over the corridors of an upscale suburban Detroit shopping center for an eight-day book sale mostly benefiting Detroit schools and its pupils.
By Irwin Cohen
While Pittsburgh embraced Greenberg, Robinson had a more mixed reception in Brooklyn. The borough’s Jewish fans welcomed him, as did most of the rest of the Ebbets Field faithful.
By Irwin Cohen
Admittedly, I took a liking to and saw a lot of the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals, who share the new spring training facility.
By Irwin Cohen
It hit me like a baseball bat on my head. I had been sitting next to Red Smith, the legendary sports columnist who knew Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb and other baseball greats.
By Irwin Cohen
I experienced all the emotions a baseball-oriented person could feel on the third Sunday of September in 2016.
By Irwin Cohen
Jackie Robinson finished his tenth major league season with a .275 average and 10 home runs. He was slowing down and saw action in only 117 of the Dodgers' 154 games.
By Irwin Cohen
Ed Mierkowicz, 92, is the last surviving player from the 1945 World Series between the Cubs and the Detroit Tigers.
By Irwin Cohen
In 1966, actor William Shatner became commander of the Starship Enterprise on television and the Trekkie generation was born.
By Irwin Cohen
For Americans, baseball provided an escape, and Jewish Americans followed the exploits of their favorite teams and of the relatively few Jews who wore baseball uniforms.
By Irwin Cohen
They asked me about him for so long that I didn't get a chance to interview or take any pictures of players.
By Irwin Cohen
The tall, handsome, charismatic ballplayer topped several polls during his playing days as the most heroic figure among Jews in America.
By Irwin Cohen
Jewish baseball history was made by the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds on Sunday, September 21, 1941, as the team had four Jews in its starting lineup – the first and thus far only time that’s happened in the major leagues.
By Irwin Cohen
Most baseball fans have heard of Merkle's Boner, but how many actually know when or how it happened?
By Irwin Cohen
The Jewish population of America was estimated at almost three million in 1916. Most did not have the means to afford even a basic Ford automobile ($440), let alone the most expensive model ($975).
By Irwin Cohen
Bryce Harper may be the best player in baseball, but Washington can't match the starting pitching depth of the Mets over a long season, so look for the Mets to win the N.L. Eastern Division.
By Irwin Cohen
My father informed me that Rosen was Jewish and I targeted him as one of the players I would follow closely.
By Irwin Cohen
Pafko was a much-sought-after autograph signer at card shows through the years and would frequently appear at Cubs games in Wrigley Field, leading the singing of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch.
By Irwin Cohen
Like the fans, she adored him. By the time his career as a player, coach, and manager ended, Yogi had collected
By Irwin Cohen
Perhaps the biggest shock for Tigers fans was the firing of president and general manager Dave Dombrowski after the trades of Price and Cespedes.
By Irwin Cohen
"It is my belief that if our clubs played a series on a best-of-nine basis, we would create great interest in baseball in our leagues and in our players. I also believe it would be a financial success."
By Irwin Cohen
The Philadelphia Phillies were impressed with his pitching prowess and promoted him to the major leagues in 1912.
By Irwin Cohen
By 1943 both Rosenthals were serving in the armed forces. Both used chutzpah and bluffed about their age.
By Irwin Cohen
Gray played the outfield better than most players with two hands.
By Irwin Cohen
While David was impressed with his great-uncle's past, he was working on his own life and future path.
By Irwin Cohen
The New York Giants’ Jewish catcher thrilled Giants fans by hitting for the cycle.
By Irwin Cohen
The Mets at least have hope for the future with some good young pitchers.
By Irwin Cohen
The big news this spring is that the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals will be leaving their old spring homes north of Port St. Lucie and moving south to a beautiful new complex scheduled to open in two years in West Palm Beach.
By Irwin Cohen
A famous face from that first '52 Topps set was Alvin Dark, who died in his South Carolina home recently at 92.
By Irwin Cohen
As the years flew by, one thing remained constant in Sid’s life – the New York Yankees.
By Irwin Cohen
During 1939, anti-Semitic groups such as Fritz Kuhn’s German American Bund held rallies in New York and other major cities across the country.
By Irwin Cohen
The two World Series combatants, the Kansas City Royals and the San Francisco Giants, were Wild Card teams (meaning they didn't win their respective divisions) that got hot at the right time.
By Irwin Cohen
Many former baseball players who left us with happy memories also passed away in the past year.
By Irwin Cohen
"No kid is worth a million dollars to sign," Newhouser said, "but if one kid is, it's this kid."
By Irwin Cohen
Zimmer was popular with veteran teammates like Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider – and with a rookie lefthander named Sandy Koufax.
By Irwin Cohen
I'm sure readers noticed those full-page advertisements that ran prior to last month's meeting about the situation at the Brooklyn home of Rabbi Moshe Tuvia Lieff, rav of Agudas Yisroel Bais Binyomin. Avrohom chaired the even along with his brother Menachem, a prominent askan and the president of Lubicom.
By Irwin Cohen
I spoke twice during Pesach. The first topic was the Holocaust and Jewish ballplayers and the second was how I, a frum-from-birth Jew, ended up in major league baseball.
By Irwin Cohen
Even if a player reaches the big league level, there's still no guarantee he'll remain with one team for long. Former Jewish outfielder Richie Scheinblum comes to mind.
By Irwin Cohen
The snow has melted in most parts of the country and here in Florida, where I have my winter dugout in the Orthodox enclave of Century Village in West Palm Beach, I had the opportunity to take in several spring training games.
By Irwin Cohen
If you're visiting spring training sites, Arizona has two advantages – fewer games are rained out and the facilities are much closer to each other than is the case in Florida.
By Irwin Cohen
There were 15 Jews in the major leagues during the 2013 season, but only a few from a Jewish mother.
By Irwin Cohen
Musial told the taunted Jackie Robinson: "I want you to know that I'm not like many of the other guys on my team."
By Irwin Cohen
Brooklyn native Lipman Pike was one of baseball's earliest paid players.
By Irwin Cohen
The World Series was born 110 years ago. So were the New York Yankees, as New York inherited the remnants of the old Baltimore Orioles, a charter member of the new American League that was formed in 1901. A year later the team was headed to last place and bankruptcy. Manager John McGraw jumped to the National League New York Giants to assume the same position and brought some Orioles players with him.
By Irwin Cohen
Rewind eight decades to 1933. That year marked the rise of the greatest villain of our time and the biggest Jewish sports hero of all time.
By Irwin Cohen
The year 1973 was an interesting one indeed. Forty years ago, the Conservative movement’s commission on law and standards adopted a new regulation admitting women into the traditional minyan.
By Irwin Cohen
"I had to grow a tough little hide as everybody was fair game to be razzed and needled."
By Irwin Cohen
Rewind sixty years to 1953. Television was considered kosher by most and featured the likes of Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, George Burns, Red Buttons, Perry Como, Arthur Godfrey, Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger, Dinah Shore, Red Skelton, Danny Thomas, Jack Webb as Joe Friday on “Dragnet” and many others who provided great memories.
By Irwin Cohen
Readers of my monthly Baseball Insider column may have noticed its absence last week (the column appears in the second issue of every month). The reason for that is I have something more serious and personal to share with you, something that didn’t seem appropriate for a baseball column.
By Irwin Cohen
Let me tell you about my new book. Like you, I’m interested in Jewish baseball players and Jewish history. So, after years of research, first-hand observations and interviews, I combined the aforementioned information from the post-civil war era to the present and came up with a book titled Jewish History in the Time of Baseball's Jews: Life on Both Sides of the Ocean.
By Irwin Cohen
Many of the baseball beat writers feel the Detroit Tigers are the best team in the major leagues. While I haven't seen all of the pre-season articles, the ones I have read pick the Tigers to top the Central division in the American League.
By Irwin Cohen
A few months ago I wrote about the passing of my brother-in-law, Rabbi Shmuel Kunda, z”l, and how he never got around to a project I urged him to take on. I wanted him to title it "Boruch Goes to Ebbets Field" and tell the story of how Boruch bonds with Brooklyn's beloved Dodgers – with Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and the rest. (The Duke was my brother-in-law's favorite.)
By Irwin Cohen
Last season the Philadelphia Phillies had a Rosenberg, the St. Louis Cardinals had a Rosenthal, and the Arizona Diamondbacks had a Goldschmidt.
By Irwin Cohen
As of early December, some 72 former major leaguers had died in 2012. The number is much higher than any of us would have guessed.
By Irwin Cohen
What an unusual postseason it was. The Yankees looked inept against the ferocious Tigers and the Tigers in turn looked toothless against the San Francisco Giants as they were swept in the World Series.
By Irwin Cohen
Ralph Kiner turns ninety on the 27th of October. Where have the years gone? Many Jewish Press readers grew up watching Kiner's Korner, the post-game television show featuring yesterday's heroes and the Mets' one-day wonders.
By Irwin Cohen
For the first time, Israel will participate in the qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic. That's the good news. The bad news concerns the dates they'll be playing in Florida. Earlier in the year it was thought the early rounds would start in other countries before moving to Florida in November. Assuming Israel would still be in the WBC games, the Florida site would be Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter.
By Irwin Cohen
Last year I told you about my "mancation" (men only) to a city to check out its Jewish community and major league team and ballpark. Last year it was Pittsburgh and Cincinnati; this year's first "mancation" destination was Cleveland.
By Irwin Cohen
Every time Delmon Young come to bat, gets on base or makes a play in the field, we are reminded of his anti-Semitic rant in New York back in April.
By Irwin Cohen
The 40th yahrzeit of Abe Stark, who died at 77 in July 1972, is almost upon us. Those of you who remember Ebbets Field, abandoned by the Dodgers in 1957, can recall the Abe Stark sign on the bottom of the scoreboard embedded in the right field wall.
By Irwin Cohen
I was lucky enough to have met and interviewed many Hall of Famers including Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, Ted Williams and Stan Musial. I also had the chance to meet and gab with many of the stars from the old Negro Leagues who went on to play in the major leagues after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier – Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Larry Doby, Monte Irvin and Satchel Paige. But I never had the chance to meet Jackie Robinson.
By Irwin Cohen
The 2012 baseball season should be a most interesting one. Every game is important. No longer can a team just play for the Wild Card spot and have an equal shot with the three division winners at participating in the World Series (as St. Louis did last year).
By Irwin Cohen
Sixty years ago and fifty years ago. 1952 and 1962. They were memorable years for many of us.
By Irwin Cohen
Craig Breslow and Jason Marquis will be wearing different uniforms this season. The two pitchers also share a unique trait among those labeled “Jewish players” by the media: Breslow and Marquis both have two Jewish parents.
June 19, 2026 
