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that much as the Reform temple has done to lighten our traditional Jewish burdens, the rush for the pennant and Rosh Hashanah, the World Series and Yom Kippur, still sometimes conflict.
    Should a nice Jewish boy play ball on the High Holidays? Historical evidence is inconclusive. Harry Eisenstadt, once a pitcher for the Dodgers, was in uniform but not scheduled to pitch on Rosh Hashanah 1935, but when the Giants began to hurt his team he was called into the game and his first pitch was hit for a grand-slam home run. And yet—and yet—one year earlier, Hank Greenberg, with the Tigers close to their first pennant since 1909, played on Rosh Hashanah and hit two home runs. Greenberg went to
shul
on Yom Kippur, alas, and the Tigers lost. The whole country, rabbis and fans at odds, was involved in the controversy, and Edgar Guest was sufficiently inspired to write a poem, the last verse of which reads:
    Come Yom Kippur—holy fast day
world-wide over to the Jew—
And Hank Greenberg to his teaching
and the old tradition true
Spent the day among his people
and
he didn’t come to play.
Said Murphy to Mulrooney “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 honour him for that!”
    Honour him, yes, but it is possible that Greenberg, at that time the only Jew in the Hall of Fame, was also tragically inhibited by his Jewish heritage. I’m thinking of 1938, when he had hit fifty-eight home runs, two short of Babe Ruth’s record, but with five games to play, failed to hit another one out of the park. Failed … or just possibly held back, because Greenberg just possibly understood that if he shattered the Babe’s record, seemingly inviolate, it would be considered pushy of him and, given the climate of the times, not be such a good thing for the Jews.
    Greenberg, in any event, paved the way for today’s outstanding Jewish player, the incomparable Sandy Koufax. So sensitive is the Dodgers’ front office to Koufax’s religious feelings that Walter Alston, the Dodgers’ manager, who was once severely criticized for scheduling him to play on Yom Kippur,is now reported to keep a Jewish calendar on his desk.
    Koufax, who has just published his autobiography, is not only the best Jewish hurler in history, he may well be the greatest pitcher of all time, regardless of race, colour, or creed. His fastball, Bob Feller has said, “is just as good as mine,” and Casey Stengel was once moved to comment, “If that young fella was running for office in Israel, they’d have a whole new government over there….” Koufax has won the National League’s Most valuable Player Award, the Cy Young Award as the outstanding major league pitcher of the year, and the Hickok Pro Athlete of the Year Award. He has pitched four no-hit games, more than any other major league pitcher. He holds the major league record for both the most shutouts and the most strikeouts in one season and also the major league record for the number of seasons in which he has struck out more than three hundred batters. He has tied the major league record for most strikeouts in a nine-inning game, and also tied World Series records. I could go on and on, but a nagging question persists. This, you’d think, was enough. Koufax, at least, has proved himself. He is accepted. But is he?
    Anti-Semitism takes many subtle shapes, and the deprecating story one reads again and again, most memorably recorded in
Time,
is that Sandy Koufax is actually something of an intellectual. He doesn’t mix. Though he is the highest-paid player in the history of the game, improving enormously on Lipman E. Pike’s $20 a week, he considers himself above it. Fresco Thompson, a Dodger vice-president, is quoted as saying, “What kind of a line is hedrawing anyway—between himself and the world, between himself and the team?” Another report quotes Koufax himself as saying, “The last thing that entered my mind