Letter from Israel
Israel Takes to the Field
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The baseball experience in Israel doesn't exactly match that in the United States, yet.
As a little girl, my parents used to take me downtown to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to see the Braves play baseball. I remember having the gigantic, saucer-shaped stadium largely to ourselves on those warm, summer nights. The die-hard fans willing to watch the Braves' pathetic excuse for playing baseball in the early '80s were few and far between, but my dad was a loyalist.
My favorite things were not fastball hitters and smooth catchers or saucy umps and hustling runners. I loved the national anthem belted out a cappella on that sea of green beneath the dazzling, white stadium lights as everyone stood in silent respect, their caps across their hearts. But even better was my clear path to Knockahoma (as in "Knock a Homer"), the authentically dressed American Indian chief who sat in a teepee and signed autographs for obnoxious kids during the seventh-inning stretch. (That was, of course, well before the politically correct movement forced the Braves to get rid of their American Indian and teepee.)
In high school, I remember being allowed to skip school to see the ticker-tape parade downtown honoring the Atlanta Braves for winning the World Series, and there is still not a game I prefer more than baseball. Maybe it's the hot summer nights and the crack of a bat against a ball that flies out of the park. Or it could be the cheesy rock music that plays between innings and doing the wave with a sea of fans across a gigantic stadium. It might even be the taste of a cold beer and the heckling fans.
So it was only natural that when I heard about the formation of a professional baseball league in Israel, I couldn't wait to attend a game in my hometown of Tel Aviv.
On July 11, I headed over to the Sportek stadium in Tel Aviv's HaYarkon Park to see my first game in Israel and the second one played at that field. The Tel Aviv Lightning vs. the Netanya Tigers. At 5 p.m. on that afternoon, I arrived in the nearly empty parking lot nearly certain that I was lost. A young female attendant pointed at the field.
"That's the Sportek?" I asked her. A fence wrapped with white plastic was the only thing I could see. No huge stadium filled with excited crowds was anywhere in sight, and from even a few feet away, I couldn't hear anything.
I don't know what I expected, but there were no ticket booths or concrete pathways or streaming lines of avid fans. As I made my way down the dirt path on the outskirts of the fence, still unsure that I had come to the right place, I suddenly heard the voice of an announcer introducing the next player up to bat for the Tel Aviv Lightning.
So this is it, I thought, reassured. After I rounded the corner, the dugout came into view, and I saw players in uniform milling around, waiting for their turn to hit the field. A few rows of green plastic chairs stood largely empty at eye level with the man at bat, the catcher, the pitcher and the outfielders. A Magen David Adom ambulance was parked on the grass in front of two temporary speakers. Ahead, two security guards in bright yellow vests slouched under parasols with a bored look in their eyes.
Just inside the gate, a small shaded table housed two sales people offering baseball caps, T-shirts and other paraphernalia with logos from the six teams that make up the Israel Baseball League: the Tel Aviv Lightning, the Netanya Tigers, the Modi'in Miracles, the Ra'anana Express, the Petach Tikva Pioneers and the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox.
"You just missed Hatikva," said Ethan Milgram, the CEO of Worldsports, the company selling the IBL-embossed clothing. Somehow, even though I make my home in Israel and I love this country, I was glad not to have seen it. It just wouldn't be the same as hearing the American national anthem, and from a previous article on the opening game of the season, I knew that most of the players kept their hats on rather than take them off. Perhaps that is because only a few players on each team are Israeli, and for many of them, Israel's national anthem holds no meaning.
A small concession stand a few feet away from the official merchandise was selling sandwiches, sushi and bamba. The one thing in common with their American counterparts was cold beer, and when I teased them about their lack of hot dogs, they insisted those are coming soon. Kosher, of course.
Before taking a seat on one of many empty chairs right behind the batter, I took in a vision of running boys fighting over a fly ball that had gone over the fence. Dressed in oversized jerseys and donning hard hats with IBL in big white letters, they could have been American or Israeli, but judging from the language spoken by most of the fans, they were either Americans on vacation or American immigrants.
"Do you know the words to Take Me out to the Ball Game?" asked Lion Klarfeld, the director of Israeli operations for the IBL. I had just settled in and was getting used to the surreal feeling of watching professional baseball in Tel Aviv.
"Sort of," I said, suspicious that he was testing my baseball knowledge. "Can you carry a tune?" he persisted.
"Absolutely not," I told him flatly. "Why?"
"We need all the women to sing a cappella during the fifth-inning stretch," he said.
Now I was certain this was a test. "Fifth-inning stretch?" I asked. "Isn't it supposed to be seventh-inning stretch?"
As Klarfeld explained, the rules of the game remain the same, but a few Israeli innovations were put into place, such as Hatikva being sung at the beginning of the game and the lopping off of two innings to shorten the games.
"This is going to be the third-biggest fan sport in Israel one day," Klarfeld said excitedly. "Right behind soccer and basketball, you watch, baseball is going to come in third."
The lack of a real stadium, flashing billboards, peanut vendors walking the stairs, bright lights and thousands of cheering fans means that the IBL still has a long way to go before anyone could claim that baseball ranks third in popularity here, but a professional baseball game was certainly under way in Tel Aviv, hiccups and all. In my book, the IBL gets an A for effort, and who knows, Klarfeld may be right about the future. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Meredith Price grew up in Marietta and bought a ticket to Tel Aviv on Sept. 10, 2001. She writes a column on Israeli innovations and cultural features for The Jerusalem Post. You can reach her at meredithmprice@yahoo.com.
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