So Little Time, and So Few of Them

The baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., will conduct a celebration of Jewish major leaguers Aug. 29-30 as part of a nationwide celebration of the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America.

According to Martin Abramowitz, a Boston baseball card collector, there have been only 143 Jewish major leaguers in the history of baseball.

The most prominent of the 10 current Jewish major leaguers is Shawn Green of the Dodgers.

A problem for Green is dealing with all the bar mitzvah invitations and the like.

“I get all kinds of stuff,” he told Associated Press.

“It’s tough during the season because there aren’t too many Jewish players, so everywhere we go, the Jewish communities reach out to us. We do what we can do.”

Trivia time: Only two Jewish players are in the Hall of Fame. Sandy Koufax is one. Who is the other?

A Brave new world: Jewish comedian Elayne Boosler, who will be at a Baseball Reliquary event at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood tonight at 8, says, “Native Americans don’t want sports teams named after them. I would like to volunteer my people. We would love the Atlanta Bravermans.”

Good reason: Boosler, host of PAX TV’s “Balderdash” game show, was born in Brooklyn around the time the Dodgers were leaving.

“My first memories are of grown men crying,” Boosler says. “Not understanding, I felt responsible. So I decided to go into comedy.”

Olympic presence: The U.S. Olympic baseball team may not have qualified for the Athens Games, but the Dodgers have a presence there.

Three Dodger minor leaguers are playing for their native countries -- Nick Theodorou, Greece; Chin-Feng Chen, Taiwan, and Rodney Van Buizen, Australia.

Past participants: Three players on the Dodger roster played on U.S. Olympic teams -- Jeff Weaver, 1996; Darren Dreifort, 1992, and Robin Ventura, 1988. And Hideo Nomo pitched for Japan in 1988.

Proper loyalties: Tom Lasorda was the manager of the U.S. baseball team that won the gold medal at Sydney in 2000. He uttered one of his more memorable quotes when someone asked him if he’d told his players to take it easy on Italy.

“I told them, ‘My father was Italian. I’m an American, so go out and beat those guys,’ ” Lasorda said.

The U.S. won, 4-2, on Sept. 22, Lasorda’s 73rd birthday.

On this day: In 1999, Tiger Woods, 23, saved par on the 17th hole and won the PGA Championship by one stroke over 19-year-old Sergio Garcia.

Trivia answer: Hank Greenberg.

And finally: According to Mark Kriegel’s new Joe Namath biography, the Hall of Fame quarterback was supposed to be a girl. In fact, the physician who delivered him was so sure Namath was going to be a girl that he told Namath’s mother, Rose: “I guarantee you.”

Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.