Our Man Elli in Israel points out an interesting revelation tucked in the announcement by would-be Israel Professional Baseball League organizer Jeffrey Rosen that he'd be shifting his attention and shekels to the Maccabi Haifa Heat basketball team he bought while an investor in last year's failed Israel Baseball League: he's also financing a baseball team in Hong Kong.
Coming the same week that the Miami millionaire Magnetix maven (AKA billionaire boychik) implicitly gave up on his attempts to play baseball this summer by removing all mention of the IPBL's 2008 season from his Triangle Financial Services website, the press release includes the following phrase in its penultimate sentence (and explains the stray baseball cap that appears amid the Israel-related sports photos on the page's margin:
"...The sponsorship of the Dragonflies, a semi-professional baseball team in Hong Kong, China, represent(s) Triangle’s continued effort to invest in emerging international sports ventures."
From the start, the subtext to the story of professional baseball in Israel is that the wealthy American men who have been involved in the battle to get it off the ground are motivated by more than money, greed or self- aggrandizement, but by pride in their Jewish heritage and Zionism.Yet the truth has been in plain sight for some time now: Jeffrey Rosen's international sports aspirations are not limited to Israel.
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