“No Jew, who is a true Jew, can ever give up hope.” — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Story and Photos by David Ogul
LA JOLLA, California — He played in the World Series, captured three Gold Glove awards as a catcher and led the Detroit Tigers to the playoffs in his first season as a manager, but former Major League Baseball All-Star Brad Ausmus made more than a few folks a tad verklempt while sharing an especially profound experience at a nearly-packed Anti-Defamation League-sponsored panel discussion Monday night about Jews in baseball.
“I was playing here in San Diego with the Padres, and in my mind, I was just a baseball player,” recalled Ausmus, who said he did not grow up in a particularly religious household. “Someone from the media relations department said, ‘Hey, there’s this Jewish publication that wants to do a story about you being one of a very few Major League Baseball players that are Jewish.’ And I was like, in my mind, I was like, yeah, I guess I am. And I did the story with the publication, and this story…I don’t know if the internet was around, but it gets sent out and people see it, and from that article on, I can’t tell you the number of times someone either came up to me saying they read it, or came up to me starting to speak Hebrew, or said something to me on one of the High Holidays, but that was the turning point where I became Brad Ausmus, the Jewish baseball player. I had multiple kids, multiple Jewish kids come up to me and say, ‘Hey, you’re my favorite player. I’m also Jewish.’ That’s when it hit home. Like, I don’t want to say I was an inspiration, but if they could take anything from me being Jewish and being a Major League Baseball player, even if that’s just a hope to play baseball, then that’s great. And that’s where I recognized the importance of really putting myself out there, cause I always kind of kept my personal stuff to myself, but that was a turning point.”
Ausmus delivered his comments at the Lawrence Family JCC following a special screening of the 2023 documentary Israel Swings for Gold (Apple TV, Amazon Prime), a sequel to the 2018 sleeper hit Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel, which detailed Israel’s Cinderella run at the 2017 World Baseball Classic. Unlike Heading Home, however, Israel Swings for Gold spent ample time focusing on the antisemitism and anti-Zionist enmity Team Israel faced during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the first time Israel’s baseball team ever competed in the Olympic Games. Athletes from other countries ignored Team Israel entreaties to swap Olympic pins, the baseball squad was skewered on social media, and team members were unique in enduring extreme safety protocols because of security concerns.
“Israel was the most hated team,” Team Israel’s Zach Penprase says matter-of-factly on the screen.
The live panel discussion that followed included Ausmus, two-time World Series champion and three-time All-Star infielder Kevin Youkilis, and Team Israel coach, Israel Baseball America CEO and former professional baseball player Nate Fish.
Both Ausmus and Youkilis are members of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Netanya, Israel. Ausmus, now a Yankees bench coach, ranks first all-time among all Jewish major leaguers in career games played (1,971). He once quipped to a reporter after sitting out a game on Yom Kippur that he was “trying to atone for my poor first half.”
Youkilis, who starred on a Red Sox team that broke an 86-year-old World Series championship drought when they swept the Cardinals in the 2004 Fall Classic, also made history the following year when he, along with teammates Adam Stern and Gabe Kapler, set the record for most Jewish players on the field at one time in an American League game. Fish played for the Tel Aviv Lightning baseball club, was a first base coach for Team Israel at the 2017 World Baseball Classic and worked as a minor league coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
All three detailed how ‘Team Being Jewish’ is being challenged by rising animosity. Youkilis, who grew up in a Conservative Jewish household in Cincinnati, told the audience: “The one thing that stuck out to me in the video that I think reigns true for all of us in this room, the Holocaust survivor said it best: We are not victims. If we have a victim mentality, we will never survive as a people. We have to stand together, support each other, and be strong. Even in the darkest of times and the toughest of times.”
He also had a message for those vulnerable to the dark side of social media.
“Stop trying to fight online with people that you’re never going to win with,” Youkilis said. “If you have a message, say your message. Don’t worry about what other people are saying. You have no idea about who they are, what they are, where they come from, all that. The key to all of this and getting through the tough times is being strong in your support of your community. Stay within your community, stay within your friend groups, be strong. You have to stick together and filter out the noise.”
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David Ogul is a public relations professional and a die-hard Dodgers fan.