Tale of Jewish slugger reveals spirit of a legend

The game of baseball seemed grandly American in the1930s. Players had cherubic names like Birdie and Schoolboy, sounding like characters froma Broadway musical. Beneath the good times, though, breathed an awful hatred.

In his new book,“Hank Greenberg: TheHero of Heroes,” JohnRosengren describes howtheNew YorkYankees used to call up minor leaguers just to harass the Jewish baseball star fromthe bench.

In the South, thingswere worse.

“No onewould ever let you forget it. You’d hear it fromthe stands all the time,” Greenberg says of his early playing days, citing a torrent of anti-Semitic invective.

Somehow, Greenberg endured to become not just a hero but a social pioneer. Well before JackieRobinson, even before the formation of the state of Israel, the Detroit first baseman became a powerful symbol in the battle against bigotry and anti-Semitism.

That such a transformation came in Detroit makes it all the more impressive.

“Had Greenberg chosen to play inNewYork, he would have blended into the large Jewish community,” writesRosengren, “but in Detroit, where less than5% of the populationwas Jewish, Hank felt isolated. The city’s environmentwas particularly hostile toward Jews.… Not surprising, since the city’s paterfamilias, Henry Ford, was its leading anti-Semite.”

Rosengren, a Minneapolis-based authorwhohas written extensively on sports, does a fine job placing Greenberg’s accomplishments against this backdrop, aswell as the chilling developments taking place across Europe at the time. AsDachau factorieswere being turned into prototypes forNazi concentration camps, the prominent young star headed to spring training with the Tigers, giving his career even more resonance.

The book occasionally slows with detailed passages on games and Greenberg’s battles with ownership and managers. Rosengren might have done better skipping a bit of this play by play.

More engaging are the details of howGreenberg, whowould become the highest-paid player in baseball at the time, changed the way the gamewas played.

Hours before teammates arrived for games, Greenbergwould showup at ballparks to groove his swing or improve his footwork around first base. Ever looking for an edge, he discovered that he could use bicycle tape to extend the webbing of his first-baseman’s mitt or use licorice to resin the pocket.

“Other teams didn’t like it,” Rosengren writes, “but nothing in the rule book renderedHank’s adaptation illegal.”

And whileBabeRuth’s homerswere high and lunar, Greenberg’swere straight power strokes, what one writer described as looking like “a Bobby Jones tee shot.”

Baseball aficionados will also soak up encounters between the Tigers power hitter and Cleveland Indians legend Bob Feller, “the only pitcherwhogenuinely frightened Greenberg,” Rosenberg writes. In a game where Feller strikes out18 Tiger batters, Greenberg uncorks a 450-foot double.

By the time he is 25, the 6-foot-4 Greenberg has developed into a charming and intelligent star. He wears his hair longer than most of the players of that day and chooses more stylish clothes. Wire service photographers snap shots of him with beautiful young women at the beach.

Greenberg spent his final 13 years in Los Angeles, played tennis daily at the Beverly HillsTennis Club and is buried at Hillside Memorial Park.

But it isn’t for such glamorous rewards that Greenberg deserves to be remembered. He deserves special note for, in the trickiest of times, connecting with fans and erasing biases with his work ethic, a will to win and a rare generosity of spirit.

Rosengren’s book reintroduces us to a player with that most-elusive trait in modern sports: genuine integrity.