Jewish War Heroes & Jewish Baseball Stars

If there is anything Jewish veterans enjoy more than talking about their love for our country, it is America’s pastime – baseball. At a sold-out gathering, approximately 65 members of the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. were treated to the inside baseball stories of Josh Rawitch, 50, president of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Rawitch is Jewish and the son of a veteran who entertained the troops.

Rawitch told the dinner attendees stories about Jewish Major League Baseball players. He also included stories about the USS Cooperstown and the movie A League of Their Own, which centered on women playing Major League baseball while male players served in the U.S. armed forces. The USS Cooperstown is a Freedom-class littoral combat ship (LCS-23) of the U.S. Navy and is currently deployed in the Caribbean. She is the first naval ship named after the Otsego County village of Cooperstown, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

“The USS Hall of Fame did not make a whole lot of sense,” Rawitch joked regarding the ship’s name. “The ship is not named for the village but for those people [the ballplayers] who sacrificed their careers to go into the service.” On Saturday, July 25, 2015, at the Baseball Hall of Fame, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus bestowed the name USS Cooperstown on the ship as part of a ceremony honoring baseball players who served in World War II.

On the USS Cooperstown, there is a connection to one of the characters in the movie A League of Their Own: A gun barrel is painted like it was the bat of AAGPBL (All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) superstar Dottie Kamenshek. Hall of Fame (1937) manager Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics saw her play and said that if she were a man, he would offer $50,000 for her (this was in the 1940s).

The Baseball Hall of Fame holds 40,000 three-dimensional artifacts, including baseballs and gloves, as well as three million documents, hundreds of thousands of photos, and tens of thousands of hours of video and audio. In the Plaque Gallery, there are 354 plaques of players, managers, and executives.

“As a non-profit, we have a mission that embodies three principles: preserving history, honoring excellence, and connecting generations,” Rawitch said. According to Rawitch, there are five Jewish men in the Hall of Fame. Hank Greenberg served in the U.S. Army from 1940 to 1944 in the China-Burma-India Theater; Sandy Koufax (born Sanford Braun) served in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1957-59; and former Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig served in the U.S. Army for two years from 1957-58.

In addition, American labor union leader and baseball executive Marvin Miller was the first executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, which completely changed the complexion of bargaining rights for players. Miller did not serve in the armed forces. On April 26, 2009, he was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame; in 2020, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Modern Baseball Era Committee with the minimum percentage of required votes, 75 percent.

Finally, Bernhard “Barney” Dreyfuss, the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, also made it into the Hall of Fame. He helped broker a “peace accord” that recognized the National League and American League as the two Major :eagues, suggested the idea of a World Series, financed the construction of Forbes Field in Pittsburgh for $1 million ($35.8 million today), and was instrumental in baseball hiring a commissioner to oversee the sport after the Black Sox Scandal. In 2008, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee, receiving 83.3 percent of the vote in recognition of his accomplishments and contributions to the game.

“If you think about what these men did – leaving what they did better than anything in the world to go fight for their country, sometimes because they were drafted but many times because they believed it’s what they needed to do as their duty… what boggles my mind, having spent 33 years in the game of baseball, is how hard it is to throw a baseball the way they threw it, step away from the game for three to four years and come back still being a .350 hitter like Ted Williams and pitch like Bob Feller did,” Rawitch told the dinner attendees.

Several Jewish baseball broadcasters have been recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award, the Hall of Fame’s award for broadcasting. Mel Allen (born Melvin Allen Israel), who died June 16, 1996, at age 83, was the inaugural winner; Bob Wolff and Al Michaels followed. More recently, notable Jewish broadcasters have included Gary Cohen and Howie Rose of the New York Mets, Suzyn Waldman and John Sterling (who died May 4, 2026, at age 87) of the New York Yankees, and Charley Steiner of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

There have been 190 players who identified as Jewish during their Major League careers. That number includes 25 players who converted during or before their careers, and players who have or had at least one Jewish parent and identified as Jewish by virtue of their parentage. Some only played in one Major League game.

Notable Jewish stars in Major League Baseball have included Harry Danning, Sid Gordon, Al Rosen, Ryan Braun, Ken Holtzman, Shawn Green, and Max Fried. The first Jewish baseball player and one of the first professional baseball players was Lipman Pike, who played in the 19th century. Pike briefly held the career record and also led the league in home runs four times.

The music for “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” one of the best-known baseball songs, which is played during the seventh-inning stretch at each ballgame, was composed by Jewish composer Albert Von Tilzer.

Rawitch noted that many of the Major League teams have done a tremendous job in hosting military events, and after one veteran screamed out that the San Diego Padres was his favorite team, Rawitch said that the Padres “are arguably the best at doing it.”

Once-Banned Future Hall of Famers

Of concern to the veterans at the dinner was whether those players deemed permanently ineligible could ever be reinstated. The most prominent former players in this category are Pete Rose and “Shoeless Joe” Jackson. Many others have been barred from participation in MLB, but none have Hall of Fame qualifications on the level of Jackson or Rose. Jackson and Rose were both banned from MLB for life for gambling on games involving their own teams.

Rawitch tackled the delicate issue of whether Rose, who was on the permanently ineligible list because of gambling, will ever be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Jackson was banned for allegedly accepting a $5,000 bribe in 1919 to allow the Cincinnati Reds to win the World Series over the heavily favored Chicago White Sox, in what was known as the Black Sox Scandal. In 1951, at the age of 64, Jackson died of a heart attack. Hall of Fame chairman of the board Jane Forbes Clark said that Jackson will now be eligible for consideration by the “Classic Baseball Era” subcommittee of the Veterans Committee at their next meeting in December 2027.

The Rose scandal also involved the Cincinnati Reds, with accusations that he had gambled on baseball games while playing for and managing the Reds; the charges of wrongdoing included claims that he bet on his own team. After years of public denial, Rose admitted in 2004 that he had bet on baseball and on the Reds. He died in the gambling capital of the world, Las Vegas, on September 30, 2024, from heart disease at age 83.

“I would be very surprised if he didn’t make it onto that ballot. In a room of 16 people, which includes living Hall-of-Famers, historians, long-standing executives, and managers – with that group of 16 people, you have to get 75 percent of the vote. If 12 of the 16 vote for him, he goes into the hall of fame,” Rawitch explained. Like Jackson, Rose is also eligible for induction when the panel convenes in December 2027.

Many veterans wanted Rawitch to recall what he knew of American League catcher Moe Berg, who served the United States government as a spy after his baseball career ended in 1941, playing for five American League teams. He started his Major League career in 1923 with the National League’s Brooklyn Robins (later the Brooklyn Dodgers). He signed his first big league contract for $5,000 (equivalent to $71,000 in 2024).

On February 26, 1930, Berg received his law degree from Columbia Law School while playing for the Chicago White Sox. In 1996, he was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

“We did a temporary exhibit several years ago on Moe Berg, and we have lots of his artifacts with one on display now,” Rawitch said.

For his service, Berg was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to civilians during wartime, by President Harry S. Truman. He declined to accept it without giving any public explanation. The citation read: “Mr. Morris Berg, United States Civilian, rendered exceptionally meritorious service of high value to the war effort from April 1944 to January 1946. In a position of responsibility in the European Theater, he exhibited analytical abilities and a keen planning mind. He inspired both respect and a constant high level of endeavor on the part of his subordinates, which enabled his section to produce studies and analysis vital to the mounting of American operations.”

After his death in 1972 at age 70, his sister, Ethel, accepted the award on his behalf, later donating it to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

When he was criticized for “wasting” his intellectual talent on the sport he loved, Berg replied, “I'd rather be a ballplayer than a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame is free for veterans on Veterans Day in November.