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Saturday, August 23, 2008

Happy birthday, Ron Blomberg


Ron Blomberg turns 60 today.

Besides making history as the manager of the champion Bet Shemesh Blue Sox of the Israel Baseball League in its first and last season, he was a New York Yankee and Major League Baseball's first designated hitter.

From Newsday:

...Blomberg keeps an incredibly busy schedule, juggling responsibilities that include motivational speaking, Yankees fantasy camps, wine-and-dine in Yankee Stadium suites and some scouting work for the team.

In addition, he also runs a summer camp for kids. He said it's "the largest Jewish sleep-away camp in the country." Herb Brown, Larry Brown's brother, runs the basketball portion of camp, he said.

He's also coming off a busy past year that including writing a book, "Designated Hebrew," as well as managing in the start-up Israel Baseball League. The league lasted only one year because of finances, but he loved it. It was his first trip to Israel, and he called it "an unbelievable experience."

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Busy the past year?
Designated Hebrew was written in 2006. Ron only relayed a couple of stories to Shlossberg the real author. Heck ,he was only in Israel 2 weeks last summer!
It was because of his hotel bill
that I defaulted!

Anonymous said...

boomer's a great guy
the book? well...
in the intro schlossberg relays how in the '65 world series koufax didn't pitch the first game because it fell on rosh hashanah!!
it's arguably the most important event in Jewish baseball history and the guy screws it up (it was yom kippur!!)

Anonymous said...

Boomburg is a caricature of a former ballplayer...he works on auto pilot that is one long continuous loop of the same nonsense...and let's face it, the guy couldn't manage his way out of a hole in the ground...there's a reason that he doesn't have a bigger role in any meaningful level of baseball after all these years...he may be funny, but he's entirely limited...too busy wondering where he's going to get his next pastrami sandwich... the sox won last summer in spite of him...when he was there...come on tb...give us some real news...or at least write about shamsky and ferrara, truly decent guys who understand the game and stuck it out all summer through all the frustrations without whining.

Anonymous said...

Why is everyone picking on "Bloomer"! I was an everyday observer of the League, and in case anyone would like to recall, the BlueSox didn't lose a game while he was there (early season), they were mediocre in the middle part of the season, and turned it on again, at the end when he returned! So he MUST have been doing something right!

CHECK-IT-OUT...... baseball fans!

Anonymous said...

hahaha , were you really watching those games? Because i played against him and he was giving hitting tips to opposing team batters.....well if you actually consider what he said tips! So im pretty sure his coaching and mantras had nothing to do with his team's success. His team won the league because they were the best team out of the 6, it had nothing to do with blomberg. Maybe you should check out their roster.

Anonymous said...

Moreover, he was only around for 12of the team's 41 games, so how much of a contribution could he have made? The leader of the team was Eric Holtz, Blomberg was window dressing. And hey, where has Holtz gone, anyway?

Anonymous said...

everyone knows blomberg was window dressing when he was around. i heard he actually knew holtz from meeting him at a yankee fantasy camp and asked him to be put on his team to help him manage the team. guess that's the only smart thing he did.
i also remember someone telling me that guy Rollhouse who dressed up as a coach when he was in Israel actually picked the Blue Sox best players at the draft. is it possible he's the man responsible for the strength of that amazing lineup?

Anonymous said...

Bet Shemesh Fan: Anybody can pick a team. Jeremy Baras picked Petach Tikvah. I believe they finished 29 games behind the Bluesox!