Jewish Baseball Draft

I'm going to represent all Jews today and share that we support Jewish athletes and want them to succeed. You know Adam Sandler's Hanukkah Song where he goes through famous Jews, primarily those in entertainment? Well, the same applies to athletes as Jewish sports fans tend to know Jewish athletes since there aren't very many of them. Even though Sandy Koufax retired from the Los Angeles Dodgers nearly a decade before I was born, he's still a legend, not only because he had one of the greatest stretches as a pitcher in baseball history, but also since he didn't pitch game one of the 1965 World Series since it coincided with Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. There's a sense of pride in Jewish athletes doing well from Shawn Green to Mathieu Schneider to Mark Spitz and even to journeymen quarterbacks Jay Fiedler and Sage Rosenfels. (Ryan Braun is a bit more complicated since he destroyed the Pirates as a member of the Brewers over the years, and he got away with using steroids. But I digress.)

Why am I mentioning this? It's a fun discussion to try to come up with the best all-Jewish baseball line-up. And just recently, a pretty neat group including former MLB players Ian Kinsler, Danny Valencia, Ty Kelly and current Miami Marlin (and former Pittsburgh Pirate) Ryan Lavarnway, held a Jewish Baseball Fantasy Draft. Fantasy sports and Jews? This is basically my dream! All of this was a fundraiser for the Israeli Baseball Olympic team. The full draft is available here or via this video:



I'll admit that I didn't watch the entire draft (yet) since it's 2 hours long. Still, it's cool that Shawn Green shows up around the 44-minute mark, and Danny Valencia's hair is outstanding. Plus, through this draft, I learned about The Great Rabbino website, which I should have known about years ago.

Now we just need some analysis on who won the draft and which team would win in a seven-game series!