Team Israel Scores a Baseball Miracle

March 8, 2017

by: Ilse Posselt

Wednesday, 08 March 2017 | ESPN called it “the Mighty Ducks… and the Jamaican bobsled team all rolled into one.” CBS hailed it as a Cinderella story. And the New York Post refers to it as a miracle. Regardless of which description you choose, Team Israel’s performance at the World Baseball Classic 2017 in South Korea has emerged as a surprising source of national pride in recent days.

Baseball is not a particularly popular sport in the Promised Land. In fact, according to Tablet Magazine, in the normal course of things, Israelis in general are unaware of the Word Baseball Classic. Moreover, few knew that a national team from the Jewish state had made it to this year’s annual international baseball tournament. Yet things changed suddenly when the low-ranked team from tiny Israel burst onto the international baseball scene as the tournament’s underdog-turned-powerhouse story.

Israel’s miracle baseball story began long before the first game of the tournament. In fact, ranked 41st in the world, nobody expected that the Jewish state’s team would even make it to the World Baseball Classic. Yet against all odds, the squad from the Promised Land qualified—for the first time in the country’s history—and the team decked out in the national blue-and-white proudly headed to South Korea to face the best that international baseball has to offer.

The next seemingly impossible hurdle came almost immediately. Israel’s first opponent was host South Korea, which is ranked 3rd in the world and has won two medals in previous World Baseball Classics. Yet in what Tablet Magazine calls “the Six Day War of baseball games,” the team from Israel was triumphant, scoring a 2-1 win in 10 innings against the South Koreans on Monday.

The Jewish state’s miraculous run continued on Tuesday when the blue-and-white team scored another victory, this time against 4th ranked Chinese Taipei. Israel will come against its toughest opposition yet today, when it faces the Netherlands, a team sporting a number of major league players.

However, even if there happens to be a hitch in Israel’s winning streak today, the team has already scored a 2-0 in the pool play and stands an excellent chance of advancing to the next round.

Apart from the fact that everybody loves an underdog-turned-victor story, two other aspects have endeared the team from Israel to baseball fans the world over.

The first is the team’s mascot, a life-sized stuffed toy dressed as an Orthodox Jew, called “Mensch on the Bench” (mensch is Yiddish for a person with integrity and honor). Sporting the Israeli team’s blue-and-white and clutching a Hanukkah candle, the Mensch on the Bench accompanied the team to South Korea, where it sits on the bench in the dugout to watch over every game. According to reports, the Mensch even has his own locker and joins the team during press conferences.

The second factor is the passion with which the team members have embraced the opportunity and responsibility to act as representatives of the Jewish state. Over the past two games, the team members have adopted a touching custom of take off their traditional baseball caps and donning a kippah (the Jewish skullcap) as the Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem, is played before every match.

Win or lose and regardless of its performance during the rest of the tournament, the team from the Promised Land has managed to give Israel a positive publicity boost, while establishing a place in the hearts and minds of baseball lovers around the world.

Posted on March 8, 2017

Source: (Bridges for Peace, 08 March 2017)

Photo Credit: WBC Baseball / Twitter