Phooey! Israel baseball big's heart in Hong Kong?

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.

ISRAEL BASE-KETBALL UPDATE: "Did I say Israel Professional Baseball League? My bad!"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MACCABI HAIFA BASKETBALL
PROMOTED TO PREMIER LEAGUE
UNDER FIRST-YEAR OWNER
JEFFREY H. ROSEN

HAIFA TO PLAY IN PREMIER LEAGUE FOR FIRST TIME IN 10 YEARS
AVENTURA, FL., - Triangle Financial Services, LLC., a sports and entertainment investment firm, is proud to announce that first-year Maccabi Haifa Heat Basketball Club owner and Triangle Chairman, Jeffrey H. Rosen, has secured the team’s promotion to the Premier League (Ligat Ha’al) for the 2008-2009 season.

Maccabi Haifa upset the #1 seeded Barak Natanya 73-69 in the Second Division Semi-finals playoffs on Thursday, May 15th in front of a sellout crowd of 3,500 rabid fans in Haifa’s Romema Arena. Haifa won the best-of-five Semi-finals playoffs series, 3-1, guaranteeing the team’s promotion to the Premier League. The promotion means that Maccabi Haifa will play opponents such as Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Jerusalem next season.

Players, coaches, fans, and the owner celebrated on Haifa’s home court by spraying champagne and cutting down the nets. "This is a wonderful day for the entire city of Haifa. This is how I envisioned the team when I bought it," said Rosen in an on-court interview.

Rosen, whose desire was to invest in Israel, purchased Maccabi Haifa in July of 2007, resurrecting the franchise from the Third Division. The former Rose Art President of International Operations and Chief Operating Officer had an immediate impact on the marketing of the franchise giving the team an American name, Maccabi Haifa HEAT, a custom not practiced by Israeli professional sports clubs.

Rosen’s pre-season goal was to have Haifa promoted to the Premier League under his first year of ownership. The goal was a bold one considering the team had just been promoted to the Second Division.

The road to the Premier League was not an easy one. The team struggled mightily in the beginning of the season, losing their first three games making it difficult to gain the attention of local Haifa fans. Through the first nine games of the season Haifa was towards the bottom of the league standings with a 3-6 record. However, after several player acquisitions the team turned it around going 12-5 in their last 17 games, finishing in fourth place with a 15-11 record. Haifa advanced to the Semi-finals after defeating Eliztur Yavne, 2-1, in the best-of-three Quarterfinals.

Haifa will begin play against #2 seeded Givat Shmuel in the Championship Series of the Second Division on Wednesday, May 21 at 19:30 (12:30 pm EST).

Triangle Entertainment will produce a documentary on Maccabi Haifa Heat’s unforgettable season.

ABOUT JEFFREY H. ROSEN
Jeffrey H. Rosen is the Chairman of Triangle Financial Services, LLC. Rosen is the owner of Maccabi Haifa Heat professional basketball club, playing in Israel’s third largest city. From 1977-2006, Rosen served as COO of Rose Art Industries, a major manufacturer of toys, stationery and arts and crafts. Rosen guided his company to yearly sales topping 300 million dollars in more than seventy countries. With hundreds of license agreements and thousands of innovative products, Rose Art continuously distinguished itself in an ultra competitive marketplace. Rosen is a graduate of Boston’s Northeastern University. He currently resides in Aventura, Florida and is very active in multiple charities.

ABOUT MACCABI HAIFA HEAT BASKETBALL CLUB
Maccabi Haifa has a long and storied legacy as they were one of the original eight teams to form the Premier League during the 1953-1954 season. During the 1980’s, fans would fill up Romema Arena to watch Maccabi Haifa basketball. The team’s reputation even had Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, the “yellows”, scared to visit Romema. However, the team’s stature in Haifa began to fade in the early 1990’s. In the latter part of the decade, the team returned to become a municipal team – B.C. Haifa. The team succeeded in defeating Maccabi Tel Aviv and finished fourth in the Premier League. The team was purchased by Jeffrey Rosen in July of 2007, who pledged to secure the team’s promotion to the Premier League in his first year of ownership. For more information about Maccabi Haifa, please visit www.mhbasket.co.il (Hebrew) or http://www.mhbasket.co.il/default.asp?lang=en (English).

ABOUT TRIANGLE FINANCIAL SERVICES
Triangle Financial Services, a sports and entertainment investment firm, has a diverse portfolio of international sports enterprises. The recent acquisition of the Maccabi Haifa professional basketball team in Israel along with the sponsorship of the Dragonflies, a semi-professional baseball team in Hong Kong, China, represent Triangle’s continued effort to invest in emerging international sports ventures. For more information on Triangle Financial Services, please visit www.trianglefs.com.

# #
For more information contact:
Andrew Wilson, 305-933-8308 x 123
awilson@trianglefs.com

Holyland Hardwood outlives Holyland Hardball

There will be no professional baseball in Israel this year. The missteps, secrecy, debts and monumental task of starting from scratch has turned the great sports dream into a dream once again. And as thousands of sports fan kick at the dirt, sports goes on.

The world-traveling blogger Ms. Babble (“U.S. Army veteran, writer, musician, jack of all trades…”) posts this morning on the American Babble site about one imported sport that's thriving in Israel— Basketball, man.

Some highlights:

Macabbi Elite: Israeli Basketball

In Israel, basketball is king.

It isn’t the only sport here. They have baseball but the Israel Baseball League didn’t form until last year and doesn’t seem to be all that popular yet.

…Soccer is actually considered the number one sport in Israel in front of basketball but I wouldn’t know the difference.

They don’t have a professional American football team at all. (gasp!)

But what they do have is basketball.

Right now it’s an exciting time for Maccabi Elite which is the national basketball team based out of Tel Aviv. They’ve found a spot in the Euroleagues Final Four and are close to a championship. It’s kinda like getting to the NBA Finals only the competition is between countries instead of cities.

E’s cousin S just returned to Israel from traveling the United States for the last six months. He made it back just in time to see Maccabi play Barcelona last week. Being the sports fan I am, I jumped at the opportunity to watch it with him.

We went to the store prior to the game to pick up some beer. I was ecstatic to find Miller Genuine Draft sitting in the cooler for me! These small American finds are what make my day. Little reminders of home to make me smile. I made a mental note of the Miller and then grabbed the local beer instead which is also called “Maccabee”.

…With beer in hand, S advised me that they usually eat pistachio nuts during the game. It’s just like how we eat sun flower seeds at a baseball game. This time, though, we bought a couple bags of pastries called burekas. They’re filled with everything from cheese to mushroom to pizza sauce to potatoes.

After half time, he heated up the pastries and we ate them with coffee. Needless to say, it was a little different from watching American sports at home. Especially American football, which usually consists of far too much beer, junk food, a river of bad mouthing, and the occasional breaking of something (body parts or otherwise)… It was much more civilized.

…To be quite honest, half of the Israeli players looked and played acutely American. The style. The attitude. Their movements on the court. Was I watching Maccabi or the L.A. Lakers?

I pointed this out to S who advised me that just like in the NBA, they could recruit players from different cities and states. But here it’s on an international scale! There is no rule saying that every player on a national team has to be from that nation. It just so happens that all the best basketball players are from the United States.

A lot of Israelis find this recruitment of non-Israelis to be insulting to their national pride… But just like in America, we have to throw away national pride in order to win. And in a sporting competition, that’s the ultimate goal.

So when we saw the black American point guard fly over a Barcelona forward for a “Jordan-esque” slam dunk we joked by saying, “Macabbi sure does have some fantastic Ethiopian Jews on their team this year!”

Israel Macabbi is playing in the Euroleague Final Four in Madrid beginning May 2nd.

Read Ms. Babble’s complete post here.

And click here for our Baseball in Israel archive site.