Hank Greenberg might be the best baseball player you’ve never heard of. Greenberg was the first baseman for the Detroit Tigers during the 1930s and 1940s. His career was relatively short – 13 years – and interrupted by two stints of service in World War II.
Yet outside the war years, there were glorious seasons. Greenberg led the American League in home runs four times, played in five All-Star Games, twice won the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award and, in 1938, nearly broke what was then the game’s most hallowed record: Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs in one season . In 1956, Greenberg was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame .
Greenberg was also Jewish, and he is often called America’s first Jewish sports superstar . As Greenberg wrote in his autobiography , that was not an easy honor to bear. Greenberg played during a time of rising antisemitism, and the cruel taunts he suffered from players and fans lasted throughout his career.
Vile remarks and bigoted slurs – “kike,” “sheenie” and “Jew bastard” were typical – left a mark on him and the sport he loved. Along the way, Greenberg also faced a crisis of conscience: his struggle on whether to play during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Jewish High Holidays. He resolved the conflict with a Solomon-like choice, more than 30 years before baseball legend Sandy Koufax pondered the same dilemma during the 1965 World Series .
Today, nearly 80 years after Greenberg retired from baseball, antisemitis.
