« Criticizing basketball ref is protected speech | Main | Bushrod Washington on Jury Trials »
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Greenberg, Koufax, and Carew
Rod Carew occupies a strange place in the discussion of Jewish athletes. He was famously named as a Jew in Adam Sandler's Chanukkah Song I, based on stories from the late -'70s and early-'80s reporting that he converted or intended to convert. And there was this 1977 Time Magazine cover, in which he wears a chai around his neck (he wore it during games. But although he was married to a Jewish woman during his playing career and raised three Jewish daughters, Carew never converted. And he is divorced from the woman to whom he was married during his career; his current wife is Christian.
Nevertheless, based on early research I have been conducting into old box scores, it appears Carew avoided playing on Yom Kippur. He did not play on Yom Kippur 1971 (5732), Kol Nidre 1977 (5738), Kol Nidre 1980 (5741) (and he did not enter the following evening game until the 9th inning), Kol Nidre 1983 (5744), or Kol Nidre 1985 (5746).
I found several newspaper stories discussing this. In 1982, he played in a late-afternoon game before Kol Nidre, reportedly with plans to leave early if the game ran past 8 p.m. In 1977 (when Carew hit .388 and flirted with .400), newspaper stories conflicted about whether he missed a Kol Nidre road game to return home for treatment on his arm, whether it was planned for the Holy Day, or whether he planned it but used the arm as an excuse; either way, he did not play.
While not playing because of the Holy Day was discussed in wire-service stories in several seasons, this did not make national news. What could or did make national news 40 years ago was different. These seem to have been low-leverage games--never in the World Series or playoffs, never games in the heat of a close pennant race.
We may need to begin speaking of Carew in the same breath as Greenberg, Koufax, and (more recently) Shawn Green.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on February 27, 2020 at 06:29 PM in Howard Wasserman, Sports | Permalink
Comments
Howard, Carew was from Panama and grew up in Manhattan. Could you imagine him running for mayor of New York as a black, Hispanic Jew?
Posted by: PaulB | Feb 28, 2020 8:56:21 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.