28/7/00

Making a Pitch for Israel

'It's a long fly ball, deep, WA-A-A-A-Y back, it's over the wall, it's out of the stadium, it's still going, across the ocean, all the way to...' Israel.
    Baseball, that most beguiling of sports, has arrived in Major League fashion, in the form of active official representation. No, we're not about to get an American League franchise, but the lords of the game now recognize this here backwater as a baseball entity, and they're intent on promoting the American National Pastime in the land of Hapoel and Maccabi.
    Most Israelis don't know a sacrifice bunt from a suicide squeeze, and there are not more than one or two ball fields in the country, so there's a long way to go, but Major League Baseball International has chosen the perfect person to get the ball rolling.
    Charles Harris must have been out of his mind to move to Israel six years ago, giving up a dream job as a senior executive with the Los Angeles Dodgers. But he has come full cycle: Baseball caught up with him, and now he's their man in the Middle East.
Harris's Ra'anana-based PR firm Coast 2 Coast Communications landed the contract last month to represent MLB in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. There are similar operations in only Japan, the Dominican Republic, South Africa, and Germany.
    Asked the contract's worth, Harris deadpanned: 'Ballpark figure, somewhat less than Mark McGwire's salary.'
    He's not doing this strictly for the money, he says; actually, the motivating reason he took on the job is his wife.
    'She's from France. From the time we met, she hasn't understood why I go on and on about baseball,' Harris chuckles. 'Now I have to talk about baseball all the time, and I can tell her, 'but it's my job, dear.' '
    Getting back into the game, Harris is giddy with exuberance. It is not possible these days to get him to talk about anything else.
    But now, instead of nattering with his pals about the plays and players, he hobnobs with league officials and team owners about marketing, advertising, corporate sponsorships, promotions, TV rights, and nationwide baseball programs.
    He chitchats with the likes of Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley and Charles Bronfman, who formerly owned the Montreal Expos; now that Harris is an official again, even Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is within reach.
    They're easily accessible compared to the one name in baseball tantalizing Harris, the man he dreams of bringing to Israel: Sandy Koufax.
    Sandy Koufax, the Dodger legend revered as one of the greatest pitchers of all time, is further hallowed by his co-religionists for balking in a World Series: In 1965, he refused to perform in a championship game played on Yom Kippur.
    It hardly matters to Jewish fans that Koufax has never assumed a public role in community affairs, that his Jewishness was merely incidental. He was one of us. He was ours.
    Harris is bewitched by the thought of escorting Koufax through the Jewish State, but the Hall of Famer is not exactly trying to get through to the publicist's cellphone. Koufax is reclusive, and seldom emerges from his Florida home to where he might be accosted with applause.
    If anyone can coax Koufax to come here it's Harris, who was well-liked and respected by the Dodger organization throughout his four years in their front office as assistant public-relations director. Harris has maintained close contact with the team, including some staffers who are in touch with Koufax, now 64 years old.
    No one else in baseball could excite more attention in the Israeli media and public - and that, of course, is what Harris has been appointed to do.
    Still, he strives to bring other big names to promote the game.
    The most obvious would be another Jewish Dodger, Shawn Green. That shouldn't be difficult, because of the fundamental difference between the two players. Koufax retired in 1966; Green, a dominant hitter, is in the heyday of his career. Green has no reticence about fandom, and most notably, he is demonstrably Jewish. In fact, when he compelled his former team, the Toronto Blue Jays, to trade him, he stipulated that he go to a team with a large Jewish fan base. (Never mind that Toronto has just that.)
    Baseball personalities came here even before there was an official representative to pave the way. Commissioner Selig, who is Jewish, visited two years ago. 'Jim Lefebvre [a retired player] was here in 1995, and he raved about the potential of the sport here,' Harris says. 'There is already a foundation, with so many kids playing. And of course, we have the perfect climate for playing year round.'
    Other big-league players who've been here include Jim Gott, Brett Butler, Pat Dobson, and Tony Fossas.
    It was one such visitor who brought Harris here in the first place. 'I never even thought about seeing Israel until Vin Scully, the Los Angeles Dodgers announcer, told me what a fabulous time he had during an off-season visit with his wife. He encouraged me to come.' Harris did: in 1993 for a look-see, in 1994 as a new immigrant.
    Guess Charles Harris's favorite baseball team.
    'The Los Angeles Dodgers' is incorrect.
    Born and raised with a passionate love for the Chicago Cubs, Harris is to be pitied if it is true that sports fans assume characteristics of their favorite teams: It has been 55 years since the Cubbies got as far as losing a World Series. It's been 92 years since they last won it. (Their crosstown rivals, the White Sox, have done much better: They last won only 83 years ago.)
    Harris says he knew from an early age he was destined to work in pro sports. He played some baseball in high school, amassed a baseball-card collection in the thousands, and a good number of autographs, but he had no illusions about being a pro athlete himself: As they say, the only way he was going to get inside a big-league ballpark was to buy a ticket.
    And that he did, to excess. 'When I graduated college in 1987, I got in a car with a friend and we drove 10,000 miles in six weeks and saw something like 20 games in 18 ballparks.'
    But ultimately, Harris found a way into 'the Bigs' without a ticket: He got in through the employees' entrance.
    He started off as an intern with the Anaheim (California) Angels, in 1985 and 1986.
Harris was selected by Major League Baseball to work on the publicity during the 1992 World Series between Toronto and Atlanta.
    In 1994, after four years with the Dodgers, he was the No. 2 man in a PR staff of 10. 'I made the hardest decision in my life. I had a dream job, I had a tremendous amount of responsibility at a young age [he was 28], and I had the opportunity to see many parts of the world - not least of which,' he smiles, 'the inside of Wrigley Field [where the Cubs play].
'People always ask how I could leave all that for Israel. But I knew if it didn't work out here, I was young enough, I could always get back into sports.'
    He made his move at an auspicious time. 'The baseball strike was looming, and in Israel, [the] Baruch Goldstein [massacre] had just happened. People in baseball were trying to talk me out of leaving, and everyone I knew was telling me it was too dangerous to come to Israel. But something inside of me said I just had to go and do it.'
    What do Israeli baseball fans (oh, right - and Palestinian and Jordanian fans as well) have to look forward to, now that there's an address here?
    Mixing vernaculars, Harris bats left, throws left, and talks straight.
    'We want to improve baseball's visibility in the region, and make people aware that we need to build new fields and improve existing ones. We will work to get more baseball games on TV, and give people in this region the experience of watching a game in person through corporate promotions. And we will bring players here to help with development.
'Baseball is the greatest game, and everyone should experience it. There is so much to it, and I think once people in the Middle East learn the strategies, understand what goes into a game, and how things change with every pitch, they'll come to like it.
    'I love seeing Israelis playing Little League. It excites me that there's an all-Israeli softball team. We've even had the first Israeli baseball player, Dan Rotem, attend a US university on a baseball scholarship. What a wonderful thing!
    'I love hearing that there are Palestinian kids playing baseball, kids from eastern Jerusalem playing in the Jerusalem league. It gives me hope.'
(Box)
TAKE ME OUT TO THE LOGM GAME...
Babe Ruth was introduced to baseball in an orphanage. So was Jerusalem.
    A reader's letter in The Palestine Post on July 19, 1948, referred to a story claiming that the first baseball game in Jerusalem was played on July 4, 1927. The reader, Ida Schwartz of Ra'anana, detailed an attempt to introduce the game here in 1922.
    A Mrs. Lilian Kurt-Cornfeld, she wrote, taught the game to boys of the Sephardic Orphanage on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, with equipment sent by a Young Judea club in the US.
    'And it was no easy matter doing so,' she wrote. 'Up to that time, it appears, the local children knew only that a ball was meant to be kicked. When a ball was placed in their hands... they would drop it to the ground and then proceed to throw up their feet. [We did] not realize how difficult it could be to teach boys the technique of throwing a ball.
    'We were about ready to give up, when a 'genius' shouted to his companions: 'Throw it as you would a stone!' As if by magic our difficulty was over.
    'We were having weekly contests, when at the end of the summer Mrs. Cornfeld left Jerusalem. It was only a matter of weeks and the boys were back at their beloved game - football.'
    Nowadays, there are 65 youth baseball teams with about 1,000 players, organized in an association founded in 1986.
    An adult league began this year with six teams and about 75 players.
    Softball is doing well too, with 300 players in leagues in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
    The first softball game here dates back to July 4, 1948, with hundreds of spectators in attendance at Maccabiah Stadium. A team of US Marines beat a collection of 'ex-Shanghai players... who came in from military units, towns and kibbutzim from all over the country,' according to the report in this newspaper. The Marines won 17-15 in the Fourth of July event.
    The Major Leagues first arrived in the Middle East when two teams embarked on an international barnstorming tour - way back in 1914. Among their exhibition games was a historic match at the Pyramids, surely the first baseball ever seen there.
    Or was it?
    According to a bizarre news report, it's possible the Grand Old Game began in Egypt, and is older than anyone imagined.
    Dug out of the morgue of this newspaper is a story from 1949, citing archaeological findings that suggest baseball was played by the Egyptians 5,000 years ago. The game, called 'logm,' used strikingly similar principles and equipment, using bats, balls and bases, catchers, pitchers, and outfielders.
    That should emphatically put to rest the unending debate about baseball's American origins.
    (For information: about playing baseball in Israel, contact David Shenker, 050-513952; about softball, Steve Harvey, (02) 586-2650; about Major League Baseball in Israel, Charles Harris, (09) 744-4192.)