Recalling When Religion Hit Home for Home Run Hitter

Remember, if you can, what a major league pennant race is like.

Go back 60 years, in fact, to when heavy hitter Hank Greenberg was helping the Detroit Tigers win their first pennant in 25 years--and, at a crucial point, dealt with a much-publicized conflict between his faith and baseball.

As the Jewish High Holy Days approached in September, 1934, Greenberg, a Jew from the Bronx, knew that of course he wouldn’t play on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, which culminates the 10-day reflective period.

The Tigers’ hold on first place in the pennant race was threatened by the second-place New York Yankees, a legendary team that included Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. And the Tigers were scheduled to face the Boston Red Sox in a crucial game on Rosh Hashanah, the first of the holy days.

Greenberg’s dilemma: Could a righteous Jew suit up on Rosh Hashanah?

As tonight’s Rosh Hashanah ceremonies approached, Earl S. Draimin of North Hills recalled that debate 60 years ago, when he was a 17-year-old in Detroit. Newspaper headlines in days before the Sept. 10 game alternated between good news--”Hank Will Play”--and bad--”Hank Won’t Play”--Draimin said.

“Hank Greenberg was only in his second season then, but he was already the first big baseball star who was also Jewish,” said Draimin, a retired manufacturer of television stands and an avid baseball fan.

Greenberg, a first baseman, would finish the 1934 season with 26 homers and a .339 batting average. Four years later, he would hit 58 home runs to share the record (still standing) with Jimmy Foxx of the Athletics for most home runs in a season by a right-handed batter.

Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax, another observant Jew, whose four no-hitters in the 1960s put him into the Baseball Hall of Fame, refused to pitch the opening game of the World Series in 1965 because the game fell on Yom Kippur.

Jewish law, as interpreted by the Orthodox and Conservative branches of Judaism, calls for fasting and abstinence from sex and work on Yom Kippur. Whereas the rules for Rosh Hashanah are less restrictive, it is still supposed to be a non-working day. But the liberal Reform wing of Judaism generally urges followers to engage in prayerful introspection on both days and attend synagogue services, but leaves the question of work up to the individual.

Although Greenberg was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, the 23-year-old ballplayer felt a strong tug of team loyalty in 1934, said Draimin, who recalled that reporters elicited a variety of opinions from Detroit rabbis on whether an exception was possible.

Greenberg later told reporters that he received telegrams giving him conflicting advice from rabbis and Jewish advisers all over the country.

“Came the big day and Hank was at the Shaarey Tzedec Synagogue that morning, so I had to drop in at least to see him, because my apartment was only a block away,” Draimin said.

An account in the Detroit Free Press said that Greenberg left the synagogue just before game time. “Hank Greenberg chose to play the game because he didn’t want to ‘go back on his team,’ ” wrote a reporter.

In the days before ballparks were equipped with lights for night games, all games were played in the afternoon. Draimin said he took the streetcar to Navin Field (later renamed Briggs Stadium, then Tiger Stadium) “and got a seat around third base for 50 cents” for the game against the Red Sox.

“In the very first inning it looked like Hank had made the wrong decision,” Draimin said. Boston scored one run after Greenberg let a potential double-play ball get by and prolonged the inning, he said.

“The game was 1-0 until the seventh inning when Hank made amends with a terrific four-bagger into Cherry Street to tie the score,” Draimin said.

As confirmed by Draimin’s photocopies of that games’s box score and partial newspaper accounts, the game was one out away from going into extra innings when Greenberg came to bat with nobody on base in the bottom of the ninth. “He homered a second time and Detroit went crazy,” Draimin said.

As quoted by the Detroit Free Press after the game, Greenberg said, “I did a lot of praying before the game and I am going to do a lot of it after, but certainly the good Lord did not let me down.”

Although he said in his autobiography that he had grown away from his ancestral faith, Greenberg did sit out the game on Yom Kippur nine days later--and the Tigers lost, although by then they had a better grip on first place.

In his book, he said that when he showed up in a synagogue that day, he was embarrassed because the congregation broke into applause in the midst of the service when they recognized him.

In subsequent years, the Detroit slugger stuck to the pattern he set in 1934: abstaining from play on Yom Kippur and taking the field on Rosh Hashanah.

Poet Edgar A. Guest wrote a poem for the Detroit News in 1935 about Greenberg’s dedication to his beliefs, concluding with an exchange between two Irish fans:

“We shall lose the game today! We shall miss him in the infield and shall miss him at the bat, but he’s true to his religion . . . and I honor him for that!”

Greenberg retired after the 1947 season with a lifetime batting average of .313 and 331 home runs. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1956.

Draimin, who moved to Los Angeles before World War II, never met Greenberg in person. But after the Dodgers moved west in 1958, he began giving honors to baseball figures as fund-raising events for his synagogue in Van Nuys--a predecessor congregation to what is now Temple Ner Maarav in Encino.

He presented Koufax with an award after the 1959 season for the left-hander’s feat of striking out 18 batters in one game. Don Drysdale of the Dodgers and Albie Pearson of the Los Angeles Angels, both non-Jewish, received awards in 1962. Later, his synagogue honored Dodger catcher Norm Sherry, who is Jewish, and Fran Cey, the Jewish wife of Dodger third baseman Ron Cey, who was known for her charitable work.

Greenberg lived his last years in Beverly Hills, where he died of cancer in 1986. Draimin said he telephoned Greenberg early that year, reaching the ex-ballplayer at a tennis club, to talk about the 1934 Rosh Hashanah game.

“I told him that was the most exciting baseball game I’d ever seen,” said Draimin, who is a Dodger season ticket-holder. “He told me that his biggest thrill came the morning after, when the newspaper headline, ‘TIGERS WIN,’ was written in Hebraic-looking characters.”