Remember the Israel Baseball League? How could you forget? Tabloid Baby's comprehensive coverage of the disastrous 2007 season and the tragicomic failed attempts to carry on led to our editor and Our Man Elli in Israel being submitted for a Pulitzer Prize-- being cut off at the pass by gatekeeper Sig Gissler-- and given a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. Now, a new group of sportsminded US businessmen with stars-- and shekels-- in their eyes-- are ready to give it another go. Our Man Elli leads us to the article in YNetNews, noting that it "mistakes Martin Indyk for Dan Kurtzer":
NY Yankees make aliyah
Co-Owner of legendary American baseball team promotes initiative to establish professional baseball league in Israel
Itamar Eichner
American businessmen, including one of the owners of legendary baseball team The New York Yankees – which is worth approximately $1.5 billion – are promoting an initiative to establish a professional baseball league in Israel.
The businessmen visited Israel and held meetings with Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Regional Development Silvan Shalom and Jerusalem's Mayor Nir Barkat, in which they asked for their assistance.
As part of the initiative, the businessmen proposed to build a baseball stadium near Jerusalem's Teddy Stadium, which will serve as Israel's central baseball hub.
Following the meeting, Barkat promised to promote the project and help find a proper location for the construction of the stadium.
Minister Shalom offered the businessmen governmental aid, if they were to build stadiums in the country's northern and southern regions.
"The entrepreneurs are aware that baseball is not very popular in Israel, but believe it can gain a following."
Officials were also examining the possibility of building a stadium in Netanya, which brands itself as Israel's sports hub.
One of the men involved in the project is billionaire Jeffrey Rosen, who owns Israeli basketball team Maccabi Haifa.
The businessmen have also approached Israeli diplomats, and asked them to help coordinate meetings with Israeli officials that can help promote the project.
The entrepreneurs are aware of the fact that baseball is not very popular in Israel, but believe that with time it can gain a following. At first, they plan on catering to American expatriates living in Israel, who continue to follow the popular American sport.
Past attempts to import the sport have proved unsuccessful. In 2007, the first professional Israeli baseball league was established, and one of its managers was former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk.
Six teams participated in the league's first season, but the second season was cancelled after the league suffered financial loses. Despite the failure of previous initiatives, the American entrepreneurs, who enjoy the support of The NY Yankees, want to have another go at it, and believe this time they will hit a home run. Cick here to read Tabloid Baby's entire coverage of the Israeli baseball fiasco.
The Pulitzer Prizes were announced this afternoon and the National Enquirer was not among the recipients.
The Pulitzer committee was duty bound to accept the Enquirer's nomination, as the weekly's coverage of the John Edwards sex, love child and potential Constitutional scandal was exemplary, achieved against great odds and in the face of disdain from the mainstream media.
Readers of this site will not be surprised by the slight, however. Somewhat beneath the mainstream radar but fiercely debated in Internet and journalism circles was the Pulitzers' summary rejection one year ago of Tabloid Baby's nomination for its coverage of the post season travesties of the Israel Baseball League. Pulitzer gatekeeper Sig Gissler wouldn't let our nomination across the threshold.
The tabloid banner waves high, however, and we expect that Barry Levine and his colleagues at the Enquirer will one day get their due.
(And we can at least take heart in the fact the Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Review-Journal, so lax and deficient in their coverage of the death of local superstar Danny Gans, also came up empty-handed.)
Among the Beatles memorabilia vendors at the marketplace of the NY Metro Fest for Beatles Fans in Secaucus, New Jersey was Art Shamsky, member of the 1969 miracle Mets and Manager of The Year of the sole year of the lamented Israel Baseball League, the coverage of which, led by Our Man Elli In Israel, led to a much-publicized Pulitzer Prize nomination that was rejected out of hand by that schmuck Sig Gissler. The Beatles played Shea Stadium and Art was signing baseballs and copies of his book, The Magnificent Seasons.
(Last year's New York Metro Beatles Fest odd man out booksigner was Butch Patrick, known to you as Eddie Munster.)
Our Man Elli in Israel has returned home to Jerusalem after a trip to Auschwitz, Poland, for events commemorating the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps as the rest of the world celebrated International Holocaust Day. Elli, also known as Elli Wohlgelernter, the award-winning journalist, New York City tabloid veteran, Pulitzer Prize-nominee for his investigation of chronicler of The Israel Baseball League and familiar across the Middle East as correspondent Israel Broadcasting Authority, spent time at the Auschwitz I andd Auschwitz II-Birkenau camps, and sends this report:
I was in Auschwitz last week for International Holocaust Day. My first impressions:Well, one word dominated everything: freezing. I would recommend anyone visiting Auschwitz to only go in the winter. One cannot imagine the suffering, or anything for that matter, because it all looks so pretty, a winter wonderland with clean snow without any red blood. But the cold? That you can feel, even with two pair of gottkas, two pairs of socks, gloves, heavy coat, Chinese fur hat, and the coat hood over that. And then you imagine being there without that clothing. That's as close as you can get to any understanding-- and even that is limited.
As for the Auschwitz Museum: well done, actually, considering how old it is, and that we've seen all the pictures of the display. The hair gets to a lot of people, but I wasn't as moved by that as I was by the suitcases, with everyone's names on it; and the shoes, and how bad a shape most of the soles were in-- real poor Jews; and surprisingly, the hundreds of pots and pans, all in just three colors: red, blue and white, for milchig, fleishig and parve.
Inside another building in Auschwitz 1 is a still-standing gas chamber, which was only used at the beginning of the war before Birkenau was built and, next door, the ovens. That, needless to say, leaves one speechless.
Another thing: the difference between Auschwitz and Birkenau. The entire Auschwitz complex, with many sub-camps, is some 40 square kilometers, which is huge. Auschwitz 1, where the museum and Arbeit Macht Frei sign stand, is the old camp, originally for political prisoners. It's a hotel compared with Birkenau. The barracks in Birkenau, such as they are, are stark, but it's still hard to imagine what it was like. The wood will eventually rot away, and they have to decide what to do with that; very disturbing is graffiti cut into the stone walls, with dates going back 20-30 years. How crazy and sick. If kids can do graffiti in Birkenau, I tried to imagine the most obscene thing 30 years from now, when Holocaust denial will be more prevalent. I came up with Playboy doing a pictorial, "The Girls of Auschwitz," with shots of them sprawled out on the bunks. If that sounds sick, which it is, it's part of the surreal feeling that you feel altogether.
With the snow covering everything, you get no sense of what's what, even one who knows more than the average visitor. But at one point I went walking away from the crowd, and came upon what was a long, narrow, underground room/corridor. Now open, there was snow covering it, except the side walls of brick, and I knew right away that this was the undressing room before the gas chambers at the end of the corridor. That blew me away.
What was also interesting to me was that I, a full-blown crybaby, didn't cry once, mostly because all I thought about was the cold.
I went as a representative of the IBA. I did a phone interview live, and brought back a couple of interviews, and thankfully there was real work to do. Also Davaned in the Rama Shul, and saw his cemetery, which was very interesting, in the old Jewish neighborhood of Kazimeirz. Just being in Poland for the first time was heavy. Overall, unforgettable, of course. but i need to see more of Jewish Poland (such as it is)-- Warsaw, Lublin, Lodz and the other camp sites.
Holy Land Hardball, the documentary about the optimistic, hopeful start of the Israel Baseball League in 2007, got its first nationwide U.S. audience last night, thanks to an airing on the MLB Network and proved to be a great, feelgood work of art about a group of men who became young again by carrying out an innocent, naive dream in a foreign land. Yet to those who know how the story played out, the film proved to be a poignant, even anger-making document as the cheerful, seemingly guileless businessmen behind the scenes were revealed to be charlatans, liars, scamsters and worse.
Experiencing Holy Land Hardball without the real-life epilogue of deceit and failure that followed would be like watching a lump-in-the-throat doco about Mark McGwire's chase of baseball's home run record later tonight, with no knowledge of his overdue shameful, tearful steroid admission on the very same MLB Network earlier this evening.
Yet for us, there was a high point to Holy Land Hardball, and that was the quick tribute given to Our Man Elli in Israel early in the film. As disgraced IBL founder Larry Baras is profiled affectionately as a bagel-making bumpkin blustering his way through the baseball business, there is a brief moment when he is shown being interviewed by Our Man Elli.
There he is, Elli Wohlgelernter, the journalist who would expose the moral and financial corruption of the IBL days after the final pitch, shown interviewing Baras months before the first pitch, Elli towering over the self-styled baseball exec, the no-frills professional, holding a large, makeshift hand microphone, wearing a tie, kippah in place, unmistakeably an Israeli, unquestionably a Jew, asking Baras:
"And how fearful are you that you could end up being called 'a colossal failure'?"
Baras does not answer.
The filmmakers, baseball historians that they are, were sitting in their editing room doing post production on the film at the same time that Our Man Elli's reportage was spooling out from this site and other publications, day after day, month after month. They saw that Larry Baras was being called many other things beyond "colossal failure." They realized that Elli was onto something from the start, and knew that history would prove him right.
So they gave him that tribute.
Nice job, boys.We're only sorry it took us this long to see it!
Our Man Elli in Israel offers a programming note: Holy Land Hardball, the documentary feature about the startup of the Israel Baseball League in 2007, can be seen on television tomorrow evening on the MLB Network.
Our Man Elli's got a cameo in the doco, so we'll be sure to tune in and go for a screen grab, although the world now knows that the story of the Israel Baseball League was not told until the day after the final out of the first and only season, and led to a solid year of Elli Wohlgelernter's independent, exclusive, groundbreaking coverage of seamy deals, athlete-endangering nincompoopery and arrogance that exposed the dream introduced in Holy Land Hardball as an international scandal and nightmare, and won Elli and Tabloid Baby, where his coverage appeared exclusively, a place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Holy Land Hardball, a film by Brett Rapkin and Erik Kesten, makes its national television premiere this weekend, airing on the MLB Network Sunday, Jan. 10, at 10 p.m.
Our Man Elli in Israel has discovered a fact that Pulitzer Prize gatekeeper Sig Gissler might have found interesting before unceremoniously rejecting our nomination: Tabloid Baby has earned a place in The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown!
Our Man Elli in Israel has resurfaced to bring us sad news: what appears to be the first death among the veterans of the Israel Baseball League. Team manager Tony Ferrara was 84.
"Tony took over for Ken Holtzman when he was fired from Petah Tikva Pioneers," Elli recalls. "Real, real nice guy, players loved him, low-key, and a baseball man through and through.
"Tony may not have been Jewish, but he was the epitome of a mensch."
Tony Ferrara played four seasons with St. Louis Cardinals affiliates before injury ended his dream, but went on to work as a batting practice pitcher, bullpen catcher and scout for Major League teams including the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners, Chicago Cubs and Oakland A’s.
He also coached college and in the minors-- and acted in and was technical adviser on The Natural.
He was a longtime friend of Mickey Mantle and even wore Mantle's number 7 in his most recent job as bench coach for the Newark Bears.
There was an impromptu memorial service for Ferrara yesterday at the Babe Ruth bat at Yankee Stadium. One of The Mick's sons was there, along with Ron Darling, Art Shamsky, Ed Kranepool, Miracle Met and IBL manager Art Shamsky and legendary Yankee publicist and IBL official Marty Appel.
Our Man Elli in Israel, the man behind our Pulitzer Prize-nominated coverage of the Israel Baseball League (thanks for nothing, Sig Gissler!), checks in after a long absence (hard at work as a correspondent for the Israel Broadcasting Authority) to offer declare a “Grand Slam for Conan O’Brien” for a late night sex and baseball joke:
“Parents’ groups are complaining that TV broadcasts of baseball games are filled with ads for erectile dysfunction drugs. In other words, things are so turned around these days that now we delay baseball by thinking about sex.”
And who’d forget that Our Man Elli is subject of the Sex & Baseball documentary project…
One of the many highlights of our solid year covering the foibles of the fledgling, floundering and flummoxed Israel Baseball League was the release of the film Holy Land Hardball. The entertaining and exciting doco about the league's startup was called "socko!" by Variety and, Our Man Elli in Israel has emerged to inform us, is available for viewing online through Thursday on the SnagFilms website.
Solomont is the well-known and controversial Boston area investor who took over as frontman for the Israel Baseball League from disgraced Boston bagel baron Larry Baras amid the financial disarray that followed its disastrous first season, intimated that he would rescue and restart the league with his own personal fortune and connections, then promised an eleventh-hour 20-game second season that was eventually downgraded to a five-game show weekend that never took place but was never officially canceled. When last heard from in these parts last December, Solomont was still attempting to raise money from US-based Zionists and Jews for a 2009 Israeli Baseball season that had already been blocked by Israeli government sports officials.
Solomont filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to papers filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Boston.
Solomont, who was a pioneer in announcing his business intentions and daily activities on Twitter, reportedly was a founder of the Massachusetts Software Council and a founder of CommonAngels, a top angel investment firm based in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Solomont listed his assets as being between $1 million and $10 million. His wife, Joan Solomont, is listed as a fellow debtor.
An attorney for Solomont refused to comment on the case.
Solomont has faced legal troubles in the past. In 2004 he was accused in civil cases of diverting money from a startup he presided over to a holding company he ran. The outcome of those allegations is still unclear.
Elli Wohlgelernter Tabloid Baby's 2008 Journalist of The Year
You know him as Our Man Elli in Israel. Television viewers and newspaper readers in Israel know him by the sign-off and byline of Elli Wohlgelernter. We've known him for 27 years as Elli, the New York Super Jew, Woody Allen's brain in the body of Tony Roberts, the rabbi's kid from the Columbia J School who wound up at the New York Post, then the desk at Channel 5's legendary 10 O'Clock News, then on to a cross-country and ultimately international journey that would land him in jobs on weekly newspapers, at television stations, in Hollywood and ultimately lead him to Jerusalem, where he settled 17 years ago, started a family, ended a marriage, and in 2006 embarked on a solitary journalistic grind that influenced the future of a nation and a sport.
Elli's coverage of the machinations behind the Israel Baseball League led to great anger among his countrymen, resentment by his colleagues and a concerted effort by his story subjects to smear him.
But for close to three years now, he's followed the story, exposed the scandals, protected lives and broke news on a momentous saga that the rest of the world media has yet to come to grips with.
And he did it for free.
The relevance? Go to our Baseball in Israel archival site and read the entirety of his Israeli baseball coverage. Then look to the recent arrest of Bernard Madoff, the Wall Street macher who allegedly bilked his fellow American Jews of 50 billion dollars.
The scope of the baseball story is not nearly so large, and the charges are not criminal, but the parallels are many. And the chutzpah is unmatched.
Elli's nation is at war this week, and his attentions are elsewhere. But as he looks toward Gaza, his IBL reportage lays the groundwork for other journalists and historians to dig even deeper, and (along with a change in rules that allows Internet journalism) rightfully led to his nomination for a Pulitzer Prize in 2009.
It also seals his position as Tabloid Baby's 2008 Journalist of The Year.
I obtained an email sent by David Solomont, who took the reins of the IBL from embattled Boston bagel baron Larry Baras (and was immediately tagged with the sobriquet “El Presidente of the Dominican Republic of The Middle East Baseball League”) stating his intention to play professional baseball in "the summer of 2009 and have a winter season Nov to Jan 2009/2010”:
The controversial Boston businessman and de facto head of the IBL is persona non grata, ever since he announced a twenty-game 2008 IBL season ... make that seven-game… er, six-game... would you believe a five-game "festivus" that never took place?
Even so, the front man for disgraced IBL founder and former president Larry Baras continues raising cash for a pro baseball league in Israel in 2009.
Every source close to the Israel sports establishment tells me that Solomont may have a chance kicking off a 2009 season in Santo Domingo starring Chico Escuela, but has little chance of running a season in the Holy Land.
There will be no sequel to the rousing documentary Holy Land Hardball, because the Israel Association of Baseball is not, and will not, negotiate any deal with the league that survived a single season in 2007.
Solomont is also urging potential investors to sign up on the IBL website for news. When we last looked, there hadn't been a new posting since the infamous July 24th, 2008 announcement that stated explicit plans for:
"…a week-long baseball festival starting on August 17th that will pit an IBL All-Star team against a team made up of premier Israeli players.
“Details of the baseball festival, which will run from August 17th through August 21st, will be announced on this site in the upcoming days.
“Players have already begun to arrive in Israel for the event, which will also feature clinics during the week in Hashmonaim and Bet Shemesh. Photograph sessions will be available before and after every game with your favorite IBL star. Tickets will be sold at the door with all proceeds to benefit JNF's Project Baseball."
As of today, December 20th, there is no update on the now-legendary Festivus.
Yes, Tabloid Baby has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize-- thanks to new rules that allow online news organizations to be considered for the honor. Our coverage of the fall of the Israel Baseball League has garnered nods in three categories for our editor and correspondent Elli Wohlgelernter, who helmed the investigations.
Reached in Jerusalem, where the former New York Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and The Forward reporter and editor has lived and worked for the past seventeen years, Our Man Elli in Israel was stunned and gladdened by the news.
Said Elli:
"I could never have imagined in my 35-year career that I would be honored and blessed in such a way as to be nominated for a Pulitzer. When I was a kid just dreaming about the business, the Pulitzer meant more to me than the Nobel Prize.
"This was a story that I stumbled into, that came strictly from my love of baseball and the idea of baseball flourishing in the land of Israel. It began as a story of a summer league and it spiralled into so much more, as we uncovered new facts, scandals and sidebars that became an epic that stretched out for more than a year. Frankly, I don't think we've seen the end of the story yet. But I'll stay on it until the whole truth comes out.
Yes, we promised we wouldn't drive away our regular readers with lots of Israel baseball stories, but we have another one that we're pretty sure fits into Tabloid Baby territory, Israel baseball or not, while only making the Israel baseball story deeper and more intriguing. And it's only a coincidence the item's arrived on the heels of our newsmaking exclusive!
This one comes from our pals at The New York Post's Page Six, who report that Art Shamsky, the former Miracle Met and the Israel Baseball League's manager of the year (its only year), has been hit with a sordid, seamy, smarmy sex suit!
Art's ex-wife Kim has filed a lawsuit claiming the Mets legend gave her a sexually transmitted disease after repeatedly cheating on her with both men and women.
That's women... and men!
Kim says in the Manhattan Supreme Court papers that during their 13-year marriage the famed outfielder and first baseman "engaged in acts of adultery with both men and women," without her knowledge. His romps included "acts of 'unprotected' sexual and deviate sexual intercourse" that left her with human papilloma virus (HPV). Medical experts say HPV can cause problems such as genital warts and cervical cancer.
The suit claims Art continued to have sex with her although he "knew that an individual or individuals with whom he had engaged in sexual relations had contracted HPV or that he had contracted HPV."
Kim says she suffered "serious physiological and emotional injury."
She wants $11 million in damages.
Art's lawyer says the lawsuit as "frivolous" and insists that Art Shamsky is free of sexual disease.
Pat Crispo says: "This is the act of a very angry ex-wife who has maligned him in the press. He will be vindicated in the courts."
Art Shamsky is 67. He was with the Mets from 1968 to 1971 and batted .300 during the team's 1969 world championship season. He was named the IBL's manager of the year for leading the champion Modi'in Miracle. The Shamskys married in 1994 and divorced last May.
Any validity to Kim's claims? Remember: anyone can make up any charges in a lawsuit... and lots of frivolous claims fly in divorce battles, and there's no better way to embarrass a n old jock than to say he's gay. Our IBL sources tell us that during the IBL season, Kim sent letters to Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post, slamming her estranged husband. She is, says one, "some piece of work"...
Remember how we spent an entire year covering the fallout from the inspirational, fun, yet disastrous 2007 inaugural season of the Israel Baseball League, and followed every lawsuit, liar, layabout and lunkhead as they schemed, blathered, promised, fought, sued, threatened, begged and bullshat until by the same time 365 days later, we had to throw our hands up and walk away?
We ended our intense coverage on that first anniversary, but not before starting up a special Baseball in Israel companion site-- and not without regret, as we wrote:
"...The story grew on its own... with all its intrigue, deceit, betrayals and bizarre and unintentionally comedic twists. And the characters-- including a bagel baron, a champion competitive eater, a fast food defector, a ballplaying attorney, an overgrown Peter Pan, a mysterious Dominican, a toymaker, a billionaire, a US ambassador, a neglected wife, a controversial web mogul-- only made the saga richer.
"In the past twelve months and more than 300 posts, this site-- a tabloidcentric site of pop culture and media criticism and satire, became the meeting place and sounding board for ballplayers and sports fans around the world-- not mention a place where anonymity allowed key players in the story to float rumours and leads.
"All credit goes to Elli Wohlgelernter..."
We also said we’d report back when there was something worthwhile to report. So Elli Wohlgelernter, the top Jerusalem-based journalist known in these parts as Our Man Elli In Israel-- the man whose reportage, hard work and expertise our comprehensive coverage was built upon-- has this report:
Professional Baseball in Israel rained out for 2009 by ELLI WOHLGELERNTER Special to TabloidBaby.com
JERUSALEM - Forget about professional baseball in Israel in 2009.
Sources tell me that the current economic meltdown is making it difficult to jumpstart a professional league of any kind in Israel in the foreseeable future.
"The economic climate is not the most conducive for these kinds of ventures,” says a figure close to the Israel Association of Baseball (Israel’s governing body for baseball and the only group authorized to run a pro league here). “But hopefully by 2010 there will be some kind of pro league here.”
The source adds that the IBA “hopes we’ll have something concrete to say this month, but it ain’t over till its over”—which seems to imply there are some serious negotiations being conducted.
Other sources tell me that one thing is for sure - the IAB is not negotiating with David Solomont. The controversial Boston businessman, who installed himself as the de facto head of the Israel Baseball League is persona non grata ever since he announced a twenty-game 2008 IBL season ... make that seven-game… er, six-game... would you believe a five-game "festivus" that never took place?
Even so, the frontman for disgraced IBL founder and former president Larry Baras continues to try and raise cash for a pro baseball league in Israel.
His “Twitter” page-- his preferred means of announcement-- states:
"Solomont Getting ready for a hectic week with 3 deals to close! 12:28 PM Nov 28th from web
"working on several transactions -- Electric Vehicle Propulsion Systems is "hot". Of course, baseball is right up there as well:) 11:46 AM Nov 18th from web
"Working on Electric Vehicle Propulsion Systems, Solar Powered iphone Charger/Carrying Case, and Baseball! 8:26 AM Oct 13th"
The problem is that Solomont’s public displays are hindering others from moving forward.
Another insider who doesn’t want his name used:
"Solomont is going around telling people that all he has to do to get a license from the IAB is to pay debts of the IBL, and that the IAB's reluctance to deal with him is simply a matter of money, and not of trustworthiness. That's been complicating anyone else's efforts to get serious traction on an alternative approach."
As long as the people leading the alleged IBL (Larry Baras, David Solomont Martin Berger and the gang) hang around, it will be tougher to get anyone else interested in taking a new approach. Even if the IAB puts the IBL out of our misery by deciding it will no longer deal with its "executives," any other group stepping forward will have to deal with the baggage.”
Sources also tell me that "Solomont reportedly has been claiming that he has the ability to raise $ 5million. I'm not sure anyone believes him, but the Jewish National Fund apparently has maintained contact with him."
We’ve asked it before and we'll ask it again:
Why is the JNF in bed with the IBL?
And how much money is stuffed inside the mattress of that bed?
Stay tuned…
It’s good to be back on the hunt. Not that I ever left.
One year ago today, Tabloid Baby entered into a bold experiment that would take our readers into the heart of an unfolding story that on the surface was far afield from our usual tabloid universe, but which from the start had contained all the elements of the best, most engrossing tabloid stories of our time.
From the day one year ago that we inadvertently jumped the gun and became the first to publish Elli Wohlgelernter's muckraking expose of the Israel Baseball League's first season, we saw that there was much more to this story than a well-intended attempt to spread the good word of baseball to a foreign land.
And the story grew on its own from there, with all its intrigue, deceit, betrayals and bizarre and unintentionally comedic twists. And the characters-- including a bagel baron, a champion competitive eater, a fast food defector, a ballplaying attorney, an overgrown Peter Pan, a mysterious Dominican, a toymaker, a billionaire, a US ambassador, a neglected wife, a controversial web mogul-- only made the saga richer.
In the past twelve months and more than 300 posts, this site-- a tabloidcentric site of pop culture and media criticism and satire, became the meeting place and sounding board for ballplayers and sports fans around the world-- not mention a place where anonymity allowed key players in the story to float rumours and leads.
All credit goes to Elli Wohlgelernter.
Known to our readers as Our Man Elli in Israel, this dogged, learned Jerusalem-based journalist worked the story alone, amid much criticism and constant attack, and he did it for no pay and for no other reason than the satisfaction of nailing a great story first. Elli was a legend in the States long before he jumped on this story. And the lessons he gave to every mainstream sports journalist in this saga should have editors jumping to hire him.
As for the "mainstream": To its discredit, the mainstream sports media largely ignored the story unless personal or financial considerations moved an editor or columnist to copy one of our posts or float a story from a source. Their lack of action on and interest in this international sports scandal proves any point we might want to make better than we could hope.
But now it's up to them to pick up the ball, follow our leads, and see where they go. After all, this story ends with a question mark. Why did the IBL's much-heralded second season devolve to a "show fest," and ultimately to a no-show?
What was the scheme?
Your move.
We gave it a year. We drove our regular readers to distraction and lost thousands of fans. But maybe we gained a few. You can find all the coverage on our Baseball in Israel archive site. If there are arrests, or major developments, we'll certainly call attention to them, but as for our weekly and daily coverage of baseball in Israel-- game called.
Game Called. Upon the field of life the darkness gathers far and wide, the dream is done, the score is spun that stands forever in the guide. Nor victory, nor yet defeat is chalked against the players name. But down the roll, the final scroll, shows only how he played the game.
Here's how it started, and where it ends:
TabloidBaby.com 28 August 2007 07:00 AM
World Exclusive! Special Report! Can't anyone here run this game? Elli Wohlgelernter on the scandalous debut of the Israel Baseball League
Readers of Tabloid Baby know him as Our Man Elli in Israel, our longtime pal and veteran print and broadcast journalist who, more than a decade ago left his native New York City and Yankees for life in Jerusalem, Israel (and subject of the documentary film project, Sex & Baseball. Many others know him as Elli Wohlgelernter, television reporter for the Israeli Broadcasting Authority and freelance print journalist whose reports on life in the Big Bagel have appeared in newspapers from The Jerusalem Post to The New York Times.
Now, in this exclusive report, Elli Wohlgelernter reports on the wild first season of the much-anticipated Israel Baseball League, which led off an eight-week, 45-game season in June:
The Oys of Summer
How Israel's season in the sun turned into a season in Hell
By ELLI WOHLGELERNTER
BAPTIST VILLAGE, Israel - The Israel Baseball League started out with high hopes, an almost mystical dream that resonated deeply with Jews across the United States: a professional baseball league in Israel!
But the result, say many, were more errors than hits: players threatening to strike when paychecks were late; a manager hired to help give face to the fledgling league leaving in the middle of the season, after trashing the league to the media; and a player almost killed by a batting practice line drive, an accident that might have been prevented with proper equipment.
The IBL was created two years ago by Boston businessman Larry Baras, who cultivated glowing press and fan interest in the United States. Baras assembled a distinguished team of advisers, executives, financial backers and former players, to help launch what in essence was a start-up company in a foreign country.
The stated idea was to generate enthusiasm and fan interest by promising, among other things, a range of marketing gimmicks borrowed from minor league ballparks in the states: karaoke night, speed dating night, sack racing, sumo wrestling competitions, and even ballpark weddings. To further build anticipation, the league’s Web site prominently displayed a countdown clock giving days, minutes, and hours until opening day.
But while the marketing may have worked among the Jews in the U.S. and the English-speaking “Anglo community” here, the league barely registered with Israelis, who were largely ignored in the marketing plans-- and insulted to boot.
David Rosenthal, a sports reporter for Walla!, the biggest Israeli Web portal, posted a story four days before opening day, critical of the way the six-team league was being sold exclusively to an overseas audience. “Excuse me, what about us?” read the headline.
Still, for those Anglo fans who did come out, it was a joy, whether hearing Hatikva sung before each game-- without taking off their hats-- eating kosher hot dogs, getting close to the players, or hearing a call for afternoon prayers being announced in the middle of the fifth inning.
Gripes
But what they didn't know was what was going on in the dugout. Many of the players-- 120 recruited from around the world-- had previously played some professional baseball, a half-dozen even at the Triple-A level, a rung below the Major Leagues. As such, they were expecting a more professional environment, and were greatly disappointed: the housing accommodations were called a hostel, an army barrack, even a homeless shelter; air conditioning wasn’t working in a half-dozen rooms the first week, in the midst of a brutal heat wave; there was no arrangement for laundry service; and the food was so bad, players said, that they eventually lost an average of seven to 10 pounds, or more.
“I’ve lost almost 17 pounds since I’ve been here,” said Scott Jarmakowicz, a catcher for the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox. “Over half my paycheck, at least half, has gone to food. It’s not sustainable eating the same schnitzel and boiled eggs three times a day. I’m a catcher, and it takes its toll. I’m sure I would have lost some weight, but not 17 pounds.”
But that wasn’t even the main gripe. Players just wanted to play baseball, and were expecting the necessities that accompany any sport. But when they arrived at their dorm facilities at Kfar Hayarok just north of Tel Aviv, there was no ice to soothe sore muscles, nor a weight room facility, absolute staples for athletes in any sport.
The league made provisions for ice to be bought, until an ice machine was obtained a couple of weeks into the season; and arrangements were made for players to use nearby gyms. Most of the players were willing to look past the peripheral deficiencies in order to play baseball, a love they all shared, and a dream they all nourished. But here, too, they were working under a severe handicap.
Bones of contention
Arriving only three days before the season began, the players had no time for pre-season workouts; and then there were the fields themselves. The best facility was Baptist Village in Petah Tikva, a beautiful diamond that hosts baseball and softball for the Maccabiah Games.
But the other two fields were bones of contention among the players: One was at Gezer, where the outfield grass sloped upward; there was no warning track in left and center fields; the outfield fence wasn’t padded; and there was a light pole on the field in right. Moreover, the right field foul line was 280 feet, making it feel like a little league pasture, and skewing players’ statistics.
The third field was Sportek in Tel Aviv, which was not even built when the season started. This situation left two fields for six teams and a schedule out of whack: teams had too many days off, managers were unable to set up a proper pitching rotation, and no team completed its full 45-game schedule-- four teams played 41 games, and two played 40. Moreover, neither Gezer nor Sportek had lights, which meant games had to start at 5 p.m., an inconvenient time for working fans.
When Sportek finally opened July 10, 16 days into the eight-week season-– and with a right-field line even shorter than Gezer's-- it still wasn’t ready, with potentially dangerous field conditions.
“There are rocks, glass, and pieces of rusty metal we pulled out of the ground,” said Jarmakowicz. “You can slide on a rock anywhere, but most fields aren’t gong to have three bars sticking out of it. And these are hard fences, you can really get hurt.”
Commissioner Dan Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, concurred. “We need to improve the fields. We used them [Gezer and Sportek], but they are not really at a professional level.”
Near-fatal disaster
At first the ballparks also did not have proper equipment, from little things like pitchers’ resin bags, to important items like screens at the bases during batting practice, to crucial equipment like batting cages, which protect those not on the field from getting hurt during pre-game batting practice. This lack of protection almost resulted in a fatal disaster.
On July 11 at Gezer, Reynaldo Cruz, a 24-year-old star outfielder from the Dominican Republic playing for the Petah Tikva Pioneers, committed a cardinal sin and turned his back on batting practice. Standing near his dugout situated very close to the field, he was struck in the back of the head by a line drive off the bat of Modi’in’s Adalberto Paulino.
Cruz was knocked cold for a couple of minutes and lay on the ground shaking, which gave the surrounding players a fright.
There was a 20-minute wait for an ambulance to arrive before Cruz was taken to Assaf Harofeh hospital, where he stayed for two weeks, was released, and went back in complaining of dizzy spells.
Cruz’s season was done, but he was alive.
“Gezer is a particular problem-- we probably should have anticipated more safety requirements at Gezer,” said Kurtzer. “Secondly, the players themselves have been too lax all season, not wearing batting helmets, and not paying attention on the field during practice. So the horse escapes, the barn door gets closed. We did institute some better safety procedures at Gezer.”
The forfeit
The players were also vociferous in their criticism of the umpiring. In one famous incident that was subsequently posted on YouTube (above), one of the league’s best players, Ryan Crotin, argued an umpire’s call, got thrown out of the game, refused to leave the batter’s box, and his team was declared to have lost on forfeit.
“There [have] been a couple of problems with the umpires here,” said one player on his independent blog. “They don't know some of the rules. They don't know correct umpire positioning. They have inconsistent strike zones at times. They have a bad habit of ejecting players for no specific reason. And most importantly, some of them have trouble taking control of the game.”
Because of all this happening the first three weeks of the season, the league worked hard at spin control. In a July 13 letter from Martin Berger, president and COO of the IBL, the players were told that everything was fine.
“Things over here continue to be strong,” Berger wrote from the U.S. “We are meeting with investors every day and we have a meeting with Major League Baseball Affiliates this week. The buzz is fantastic.”
Rebellion
Three days later was payday, and miscommunication between the league and players resulted in smaller paychecks than were expected. Players-– led by those from the Dominican Republic, who were much more in need of the money to send to their families back home-- threatened to strike, 22 days into the brand new league.
In rushed the league’s commissioner, who scrambled up to Kfar Yarok to stem the rebellion. Around noon, a meeting was held on an outdoor basketball court with the player’s improvised union, led by 45-year-old Alan Gardner, centerfielder for the Blue Sox and a practicing New York lawyer.
“It was funny because the IBL was close to striking-- it was surreal,” said a player in attendance. “Some of the players took video of the makeshift meeting because we all thought it was so funny.”
Not to the league it wasn’t. Kurtzer-– a savvy veteran of tough Middle East political negotiations-- told the players that there had been a misunderstanding, but that he would not negotiate under threat - and, according to players who were there, that he would cancel the league if they struck, a threat Kurtzer denied.
“I didn’t say that,” Kurtzer said. “I said, ‘I’ll talk to you all day, and we’ll fix the problem, but I’m not going to be here with you saying if you’re not happy you’re going out on strike.’ I said, ‘If you want to go out on strike that’s your choice, I can’t stop you.’ ”
Kurtzer explained the mix-up, saying: “The problem at the beginning of the season was that they didn’t understand that we overpaid them the first time, and therefore we adjusted it the second, and our communications broke down. In other words, after two weeks there were supposed to get a week’s pay, and then have that week delay, as in most businesses. After two weeks we paid them for two weeks, so after the second two weeks, we paid them for one week, and we were gong to start the delay, and they said ‘hey, wait a minute, we worked two weeks, and threatened a strike. It was explained to them, and they understood it.”
At a subsequent payday, money was again late. The players, having heard rumors about the league’s financial difficulties, were upset that the league was not more forthcoming.
“I believe that they knew seven or 10 days ahead of time that it was going to be late,” said Jamarkowicz. “Don’t just have us show up, keep telling us you’re going to pay us, and then when we get there, when you knew 90 percent chance that it wasn’t going to come through, tell us, ‘Hey, we’re really trying to get you paid, it could be up to a week late. We’re gonna push it back. We’re gonna try and give you 100, 200 shekels to try to get you by, just work with us.’ I’m more than willing to work with anybody 100 percent. I understand financial backing, new league, things are going to happen. I’m OK with that. But be up front with me, be honest with me, don’t BS me around.”
No balls
Meanwhile, the threatened strike was headed off, and baseball continued. But not all the teams were doing well. The Petah Tikva team, managed by former Jewish Major Leaguer Ken Holtzman, was losing a lot of games, and was destined for last place early on. The losing, and the problems encountered all season, finally got to Holtzman, and he publicly criticized the league, the teams, the players, the fields, and the Israeli fans. (see sidebar)
The league, understandably, was outraged over his words and his going public. It was the black eye the league had been working to avoid all season. Two weeks later, the league and Holtzman reached an agreement for him to leave.
But the league was in trouble, financially most of all. At one point there were no more baseballs, partly a result of players handing out too many souvenirs in the spirit of promoting the league. The IBL had to order more, and the players were ordered not to give away any baseballs to fans, under threat of a 50 shekel fine.
“I know how hard it is to say no and I am very aware of how persistent and sometimes over-zealous our fans can be,” Berger wrote the players on July 31. “But we cannot throw balls into the stands anymore. I just brought over 3500 more baseballs. This is it for the rest of the season. If we run out, we stop playing.”
The players were upset.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to say no to a seven-year-old boy asking for a ball?” wrote Jesse Michel on his blog. “What should I tell him, ‘No son, the league has threatened to fine me if I give you one?’ Right.”
Fans in the dark
All of the various issues plaguing the league were unknown to the public during the season, the result both of an absence of news reporting, and a major effort at spin control by the league.
With the notable exception of Rosenthal writing all season on Walla!, the Israeli press-- Hebrew and English-- was mainly uninterested. The stories that were printed were written by the league’s amateur reporters, who consistently led with the wrong news day after day: a story on a no-hitter led with the news that the game was the quickest of the year, while the story on the All-Star game began with the home run-hitting contest, to cite two examples.
The league was happy with the free, non-controversial publicity, and tried to control any negative publicity by censuring players blogging on their Web site, as well as influencing independent bloggers to remove negative postings.
So the fans kept in the dark on the dugout intrigue supported their teams blindly. By far the teams with the most fan support were Bet Shemesh, followed by Modi’in, two cities with large Anglo communities. One fan from Bet Shemesh celebrated his 45 birthday by baking a cake and traveling to Tel Aviv to hand out slices to his beloved Blue Sox.
“It brought back innocence,” Alan Krasma said of his summer experience, while dishing out the desert. “If you look at the last two summers, we had Gush Katif two summers ago, we had the Lebanon war last summer. This summer was just really relaxed. I was able to come with each of my kids to the game, we met a few of the players, and we really got to know them. It was like coming to watch a bunch of friends play.”
Too little, too late
But while Americans supported the sport-- the league’s attendance ranged from an average of 73 for Netanya to 418 for Bet Shemesh, though it was often a matter of guesswork-- there were few Israelis who attended. The promised marketing gimmicks never happened, and outreach to communities was too little, too late: teams visited their respective city’s malls to give out free tickets and paraphernalia in the seventh week of the eight-week season.
“We did, I think, a superlative job for a new league marketing among Americans in America and among Anglos in Israel,” said Kurtzer. “And we did nothing with Israelis. Part of it had to do with organization. We talked about it a lot, and then we didn’t hire anybody to do it for a long time, and then there was a budget issue, we spent a lot of money on the television contract… This was our management fashla,” he said, using the Israeli slang for a screw-up. “That’s what it was."
Not all Anglos felt the outreach. Rabbi Stewart Weiss, a lifelong fan of his hometown Cubs and a former Bleacher Bum, is director of an organization in Ra'anana helping new immigrants. He and his family attended several games to root for the IBL team named after his adopted city, the Ra'anana Express-- but heard little, if any, information about the team and league in Ra'anana itself.
"They're called the Ra'anana Express, but they don't play here, there is no publicity about them in town, and you can't buy tickets locally," said Weiss. "There ought to be a concerted attempt to reach out to Ra'anana - a city of 75,000, one-third of whom are English-speaking immigrants. There has to be a stronger connection to the city in order to build team spirit and team support. Can you just name a team after a city without actually involving the city or its inhabitants?"
No pay, no play
The league did try one marketing drive aimed at Israelis-- they paid the Israeli sports channel to broadcast Sunday night games in Hebrew. But when payment stopped coming, so did the broadcasts.
“It’s a shame this is what they are doing to us, after we put our heart and soul in it,” Yaron Talpaz, sports channel’s vice president for business development, told Walla! “We did not expect this kind of management from a league whose commissioner was the former U.S. ambassador to Israel.”
Kurtzer said everyone would eventually be paid, including, he admitted, himself, and that it was a shame the sports channel chose not to broadcast the second half of the season, including the championship game.
“Yes, we do owe them money, but I’m confident that they are gong to get paid. It’s a haval that we didn’t have the cash flow to pay them, it’s haval that they didn’t want to do it on faith that they are going to get paid, so, haval. Everyone’s going to get paid.”
Kurtzer said that plans for next season are already under way, that he and league management knows what needs to be done, and that a replay of this season’s problems isn’t likely.
“It will be different in the sense that you will have other complaints-- the food is always going to be a complaint-- but I’d say that 75 percent of the legitimate stuff that these guys complained about this year-- legitimate being because it was true-- we’ll fix it. And they’re gonna get paid on time, and we now know that you gotta get the laundry right, so all that stuff will be done right.
The main problem, he said, was not enough hands on board.
“We need more personnel, league personnel, just to handle issues. Very often players didn’t know to whom to turn, so you just need enough people – someone who is responsible for x, and responsible for y, and you know where to go. So those are the things we’ll work on.”
The players themselves understood that. By the time the Blue Sox beat the Modi’in Miracle for the championship, the players had put all the problems behind them, and were sad to see the inaugural season end. The camaraderie was evident the night before the playoffs, when they held an award night and gave out “The Schnitzel Award” in a number of jocular categories.
Almost to a man, all players asked said they would love to come back and play another season, if they don’t get offers to play anywhere else.
“My personal experience has just been wonderful in every aspect of it,” said Eric Holtz, the 41-year-old player manager for the Blue Sox. “To be able to play and compete, having my wife and children here for three weeks and having them involved in one of the most exciting things of my life, has just been phenomenal. And being a Jew, you can’t come here and not feel some sense of spirituality. And I’m not a religious Jew.”
Asked if he and the other players would come back next season, after all they went through, Holtz didn’t hesitate.
“If they lived through the worst and survived,” he said, “then why wouldn’t they come back next year?"
Elli Wohlgelernter contributed to Roger Kahn's semi-classic baseball book, Good Enough To Dream, and considers this story something of a bookend. Watch Tabloid Baby for more exclusive reports from Our Man Elli in Israel.
And don't forget to read the sidebar on the mudslinging exit of manager Ken Holtzman.
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