"It's over. Now and perhaps forever."

As we reported this morning, today, March 1st, was considered by all involved to be the drop dead deadline decision day on whether professional baseball will be played in Israel in the Summer of 2008. The deadline has come and gone. And so, apparently, has the dream.

Our Man Elli in Israel checked in as soon as Shabbos ended:

"Well, March 1st is here and gone, and so is baseball in Israel.

"Not officially yet, as the IPBL continues to scramble to try to make it happen. But it's obvious that there will be no baseball in Israel in 2008. And it's not even just a matter of squaring the debts of the IBL. It also has to do with the simple task of forming a baseball league. That task takes money, lots of money, and there isn't enough of it. Not that the IPBL's Jeff Rosen doesn't have the money himself, if he wants to go out and create the league. But he wants other people to put up some money as well, and right now his game plan has investors losing for the first four to five seasons.

"And with all the bad publicity generated by Larry Baras and the IBL, potential investors are gunshy. And understandably so.

"In short, it's over. Now, and perhaps forever. And that is very sad."

Cream cheese-filled Israel Baseball Bagelgate! Investigation shows IBL founder Larry Baras' greatest "invention" was invented by someone else!

“A filled bagel dough product has a hollow spherical shell filled with cream cheese. The dough is formed into an open ball, which is sealed after insertion of a scoop of cream cheese. The filled ball is steamed to skin outer and inner crusts, then baked to provide a dense crumb. The resulting product is freezable for long shelf-life.”

---Abstract from U.S. Patent #5514395,
“Filled bagel dough product and method,”
awarded to Alvin Burger of Miami, Florida

Larry Baras. Baseball, Baras. Baras, bagels. Bagels, Baras… Any thanks due Boston businessman for bringing the American dream of professional baseball to Israel in the Summer of 2007 have been overshadowed by shouts that he be spanked for messing up and leaving behind a million dollars in debts and an uncertain future like some kind of sporting Max Bialystock. But even after Our Man Elli in Israel's reporting brought down his house of baseball cards, one thing you couldn’t take away from the guy was the fact that he invented something no Jew would have imagined possible: a bagel with a schmear you could eat in the car without having the cream cheese schplutz out and schplat onto your lap.

The Unholey Bagel (such a name!), inspired by the jelly donut and first marketed in 1997 by Larry’s SJR Foods, inspired a dream of another kind: Natalie Blacher’s dream to market through Larry’s innovative blintzlike bagel around the world. To those ends, she says she invested $275,000 in the Unholey dream-- only to wind up suing Larry Baras-- now known as “Boston bagel baron Baras”-- in federal court for securities fraud complaining that he used her money on personal expenses and setting up his big deal league.

And now— oy, the pain!— mega giant conglomerate Kraft Foods comes out with its new substance-filled Bagel-er bagel-like sticks! And with it comes a real pickle: evidence that Larry Baras did not invent the cream cheese-filled bagel after all.

A story posted yesterday on the blogsite So Good (“an absurd look at the world of food”) contends:

“…The ‘Unholey Bagel’… was released by SJR foods in 1997. Larry Baras is credited as the inventor by some sources.

"However, A U.S. Patent for the idea of a cream cheese filled bagel was issued on May 7, 1996 to a man named Alvin Burger. It is unclear what Burger’s involvement with the ‘Unholey Bagel’ is, but he was working to patent the idea around the same time, after he lost the rights to a product he invented called the ‘Bagel Ball’ while he was the owner of Roasters & Toasters.

“Alvin Burger holds a U.S. patent not just for the idea of a bagel pre-filled with cream cheese, but for the boiling process, steaming process and forming process involved in making it. He is also credited with founding Al’s Famous Filled Bagels, and for creating Bagel sticks and New Orleans style bagel sticks.”

And looking back, our team finds a trail of factoids and obvious clues that some in the mainstream media and businessworld overlooked. For instance, The Boston Business Journal reported on January 24, 1997:

"One year ago, Larry Baras had a business epiphany.

"'I used to have to eat in the car. So one morning, I went to Dunkin' Donuts for a bagel and cream cheese.

"'As I was driving around, I opened the bag to find an unsliced bagel, a plastic knife that couldn't cut much of anything, a tube of cream cheese and a napkin. So I tried to cope and put the cream cheese on the bagel while I was driving. Eventually, the cream cheese ended up all over my suit and the car upholstery. And then I thought, "There's got to be a better way."

"From that point on, Baras was on a culinary mission: Make the world's first bagels with preinstalled cream cheese and sell them. Lots of them."

A USA Today article from March 5, 1997 that’s posted on Baras’ SJR Foods site reads in part:

"Can you teach an old bagel new tricks?

"Larry Baras thinks so.

"He has created the UnHoley Bagel, which not only has no hole but also comes pre-filled with cream cheese.

"The 44-year-old Boston-based financial planner frequently found himself eating one on the run, which usually meant grabbing a bagel and cream cheese at a convenience store. But he often ended up with more cheese on his tie and the steering wheel than on the bagel.

"`They call it a convenience food, but I knew there had to be a better way.'

"So Baras, riding a boom in the $2.6 million bagel business, worked with a local Boston-area bakery to develop a bagel that could be pumped full of cream cheese after baking."

But midway between those two publications, on February 28, 1997, The South Florida Business Journal came out with an article that made it clear Baras was no (Alexander Graham) Bell of the bagel— though his claim of a brand new thing apparently “rang a bell”:

“…If the Unholey Bagel rings a bell with Miamians, it's because the concept is strikingly familiar to that of the Bagel Ball-- a ball-shaped bagel with cream-cheese baked into the middle that has been served for years at Suniland's Roasters & Toasters restaurant.

"Alvin Burger, a former Roasters & Toasters owner who invented the Bagel Ball… who lost most of his rights to Bagel Ball royalties after litigation with a former business partner, has been busy since then inventing two similar products: a creamcheese-filled bagel 'stick,' and a normal-looking bagel with the cream cheese baked inside."

So Larry Baras didn’t even invent the cream cheese-filled bagel? It was actually invented in the same place where Natalie Blacher lived around the same time Baras claimed to have come up with the bagel brainstorm? Say it ain't so, Schmoe! What’s next? An admission that there won’t be a second season of the IBL?

Hey, how about a Broadway show?