For Determined Filmmaker, Tale of Jewish Baseball Hero Became a Quest

Like someone recalling Pearl Harbor or President Kennedy’s assassination, Aviva Kempner marks as a turning point in her life the moment she heard a radio report telling her that cancer killed Hammerin’ Hank Greenberg.

What seemed a relatively minor sports news item on Sept. 5, 1986, about the death of a baseball old-timer and Hall of Famer the day before at age 75, was an epiphany for the filmmaker. Fresh from making her first documentary, about Jews who resisted the Holocaust, Kempner at that moment choose Greenberg’s life as her next project.

What followed was an often painful, frustrating and seemingly endless odyssey scraping together funds to make the $1-million documentary about baseball’s first Jewish superstar, a man Kempner never met or saw play. The result almost 14 years later is “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg,” a film she is unashamed to describe as a love letter to a man she calls “the Jewish Jackie Robinson.” The film, which opens Friday in Los Angeles, has been getting strong critical reviews.

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A hulking 6-foot, 4-inch first baseman from the Bronx, Henry Benjamin Greenberg was the hero of the Detroit Tigers in the 1930s and 1940s. A two-time most valuable player, Greenberg led the Tigers to two World Series victories and four American League pennants in an era when the New York Yankees dominated virtually every year with players such as Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio.

Greenberg’s career is often overlooked in discussions about all-time greats, which Kempner attributes in part to his playing in Detroit rather than on the East Coast as well as the nearly four seasons he lost to military service in World War II. Had Greenberg’s career not been interrupted, his numbers would better reflect the kind of impact he had on the field.

That said, Greenberg’s unsuccessful chase of Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1938 dominated America’s sports pages much as Roger Maris, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire would with their home run pursuits decades later. His 183 RBIs in the 1937 season seems almost insurmountable even in today’s turbocharged era of power hitting and home-run friendly ballparks.

Greenberg’s appeal to Kempner, 53, came partly because of the place he occupied in her childhood growing up in Detroit. He was the idol of her immigrant father, who used to take her to Tiger Stadium and tell her Hank Greenberg stories. The documentary, she says, is as much a tribute to her father as it is to Greenberg.

It also gave her the opportunity to counter what she feels is an annoying stereotype of Jewish men as wimps. “I wanted to show a strong, big Jew. Usually you see this nebbish, Jewish nerd,” said Kempner, who’s the film’s director, writer and producer.

But what makes Greenberg imminently more fascinating than a lot of other 20th century athletes is how he transcended sports because of the times he lived in. The backdrop to Greenberg’s career was an era of domestic anti-Semitism fueled by Hitler’s rise in Germany. He was heckled at the ballparks by spectators and opposing players about as often as he saw a curveball heading his way. Some players would crassly suggest pitchers throw a pork chop at him to strike him out. Through it all, Kempner’s film makes clear, he played with dignity.

“Detroit was a hotbed of anti-Semitism. That made him a role model even more,” Kempner said.

To millions of Jewish youths and immigrant Jews assimilating into American culture through baseball, Greenberg achieved folk hero status.

Yet Greenberg was a reluctant icon. He was not very religious, rarely going to temple. Kempner believes it was because he was part of a generation that rebelled against the Orthodox Judaism of their parents. Greenberg’s son, Steve, a consultant on the film, believes his father became disillusioned with organized religion as a whole.

A modest man, Greenberg preferred to frame his life in terms of the clutch hits he got rather than his stature as a Jewish role model or a social figure. Although a gregarious raconteur, Greenberg shunned introspective interviews. Kempner found only two television chats. In both of those interviews, with Dick Schaap and Howard Cosell, respectively, the dominant subject is baseball, not the discrimination he endured or the emotional scars he carried.

“My dad was a very private person. He would never have done a film about his life while he was alive. He never wrote his life story while he was alive,” Steve Greenberg said.

Greenberg’s widow, Mary Jo, says the film and clips, some of which she had never seen, reminded her of Greenberg’s humbleness.

“He didn’t see himself as an icon at all. That was part of his charm,” she said.

Fortunately for Kempner, Steve Greenberg and his wife persuaded Hank in the last two years of his life to record his recollections on a Dictaphone they bought him. After Greenberg died, New York Times sportswriter Ira Berkow was brought in to write what became Greenberg’s autobiography, “Hank Greenberg: The Story of My Life.”

With some sound enhancements, the tapes allowed Kempner to let Greenberg tell much of his own story. She also found Greenberg’s ex-teammates eager to talk about someone they respected both for his on-field conduct amid the heckling and for the broad shoulders they rode into the World Series.

Finding the money to tell Greenberg’s story proved more difficult than finding the archival information Kempner needed. The credits of the movies thank countless people who contributed, including such well-known Hollywood figures as Lew Wasserman, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg. Norman Lear, Kempner says, was especially active in soliciting people to contribute. Still, Kempner needs to pay for the film’s music rights.

The First Player to Make $100,000

From a sports fan’s standpoint, the documentary makes one realize just how good the Tigers and Greenberg were in an era when most people probably assume the Yankees were unbeatable. Greenberg became the first player to be named MVP at two positions, first base and left field, as well as the first player to make $100,000 a year. He also had one of the great sports comebacks ever, when he returned from his World War II service to become MVP again and lead Detroit into the World Series.

One of the Greenberg interviews also provides a hilarious anecdote that reflects the innocent charm of baseball in Greenberg’s era. Greenberg mischievously tells how the Tigers found a way to pick off the opposing catchers’ signals to the pitchers when one of his teammates happened to bring his hunting rifle to the ballpark. Looking through the rifle scope, he realized one could see home plate clearly from center field. A man was stationed with binoculars in center, raising and lowering his arms to signal hitters if a fastball or curve was coming.

Kempner also deals with what Steve Greenberg believes is the biggest myth about his father: that during his chase of Babe Ruth’s home run mark, teams pitched around Greenberg because they didn’t want a Jew to break the record. Kempner films a non-Jewish former teammate who is convinced they did, and a Jewish pitcher who believes they didn’t. She then lets Steve Greenberg have the final say, making the point that his father never believed that they did.

Wrong Uniform Creates More Than a Stir

Kempner’s most shocking anecdote serves as a reminder of how players like Greenberg, no matter how good they were, were at the complete mercy of owners then. In 1947, a photo of Greenberg holding a uniform from the dreaded Yankees appeared in the Sporting News along with a suggestion that Greenberg might want to return home to the Bronx to end his playing days.

Detroit’s owner, Walter Briggs Jr., went ballistic, trading Greenberg to the last-place Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League and letting Greenberg find out about it on the radio. Briggs’ grandson, who idolized Greenberg, recalls Kempner asking his grandfather if it was really true.

Only later did it come out that the picture had been taken years earlier during the war when Greenberg, playing an exhibition to raise money for war bonds, had to wear the Yankees uniform because it was the only one that fit him. The picture was snapped as a joke but got Greenberg banished to the Pirates. One could only imagine the kind of reaction today from fans, the media and the players union.

Greenberg later became part of baseball’s management, as general manager of the Cleveland Indians when the team last won the World Series in 1954, and as vice president and part owner of the Chicago White Sox when the team lost the World Series to the Dodgers in 1959. Still, the scars of the Pittsburgh trade were deep. Greenberg later testified on behalf of Curt Flood in his legal challenge that helped pave the way for modern free agency and the millions of dollars today’s players reap each year.

Last winter, the Dodgers traded for outfielder Shawn Green, who had told the Toronto Blue Jays he wanted to be traded to a city with a large Jewish population because his heritage is important to him. Other players, such as the Texas Rangers’ Gabe Kapler, also are proud Jews. But, as Kempner notes, it’s a different era now.

“Jews care about Shawn Green in Los Angeles, but having Shawn do well doesn’t improve their lives or the ability to view injustices in their lives. Hank was clearly the Jewish Jackie Robinson,” she says.