By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — I get mail almost every day, but not a lot of mail, just enough mail. While some people tell me they get over 100 emails a day and are swamped with correspondence, I just get two or three emails per day, and it’s easy to keep up with them. I’m lucky I guess. Nobody ever writes to me. Well, hardly ever.
But the letters that do come through the ethersphere that Al Gore invented are great, and always have a good story to impart.
For example, just the other day, a retired sports editor for a daily newspaper in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey tracked me down via my address contact here at San Diego Jewish World and gave me any idea for another column.
Meet Bob Wechsler, who now lives in North Carolina and is the author of “Day by Day in Jewish Sports History,” an encyclopedia of sorts published in 2007.
Wechsler started off his email: “I read your article on Woody Gelman and Sy Berger online at the San Diego Jewish World website the other day– my parents and sister live in San Diego — and I wanted to get in touch with you.”
Turns out that Wechsler is working on a new book for Jewish Major Leaguers (the organization that produced a set of baseball cards of every Jewish baseball player in 2003 and several update sets since).
The book, set for release in 2016, is about Jewish representation on baseball cards, he told me.
As he continues his research for the book, Wechsler has already taken a stab at starting the introduction, and he sent me an excerpt.
“Topps’ massive 1952 [baseball card] set was the brainchild of Sy Berger, who is considered the ‘father of the modern baseball card.’ Along with artist Woody Gelman, [the two Brooklyn Jews] created the basic design and information on the card backs which are still the standard today,” Wechsler writes.
“Then we got professional designers,” Berger told Sports Collector’s Digest in 2007. “I designed that 1953 card and was instrumental in getting the painting done. We had a guy doing those paintings a mile-a-minute. A little off-the-wall guy named Moishe. He did the bulk of the cards.”
Now this is how and why our email exchange started. Wechsler wants to know who this ”Moishe” might be and asked me if I could ask around.
So I asked around. His real name was Maurice Blumenfeld, my sources in the baseball world told me.
In a subsequent email, Wechsler told me that his book-in-progress is tied in to a project with a Jeff Aeder in Chicago who wants to start a traveling Jewish baseball museum.
“Jeff is a real estate guy and restaurant operator who opened a popular kosher BBQ near the Wrigley Field baseball stadium,” Wechsler told me. “It’s called ‘Milt’s BBQ for the Perplexed,’ with a nod to everyone who has an Uncle Milt and Maimonides ancient Jewish text Guide for the Perplexed.”
There’s more to come on this travelling Jewish baseball museum idea, since as they say in newsrooms, even today, this story has legs!
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Bloom, based in Taiwan, is an inveterate web surfer. Your comment may be posted in the space below or sent to dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com