It's that time of year.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah!"
"Sez who?"
"Sez me!"
October cometh, and the ancient enmity
bubbles up.
It's not impossible to imagine peace
between Jews and Arabs, haredim and the
secular, Right and Left. Give them a few
hundred years, and they'll work out their
differences. It's possible.
The Dodgers and Yankees? Absolutely
impossible.
Even here in Israel, where we have
other things to worry about, the World Series
brings out the worst in the best of people.
"God loves the Yankees,"
states David Schenker of Ra'anana.
"Aw, c'mon! How do you know?"
snorts Charles Harris of Modi'in, stroking
his Dodgers cap.
"I know." David
is religious, so it's hard to argue.
"Well, Tommy Lasorda says that
God is a Dodger fan."
"Oh yeah? How does he
know?"
"He just knows." Lasorda
is Italian, so it's hard to argue.
(Both agree that the devil loves
the Expos.)
It doesn't matter that their teams
are gone fishin' while others play
for baseball supremacy. The World Series
is a springboard, an excuse to either lick
old wounds, or rub salt in them.
It's "us against them"
-- but not necessarily along clear-cut lines,
of the National League versus the American.
David says he's in shock. "Cleveland
and Florida?! Gimme a break." He chuckles.
David's of three minds. First, he says he's
neutral. "I don't hate either one."
Then he says he's leaning toward Florida,
"because they spent their money well,
did what they have to, and anyway, Cleveland
beat the Yanks so I can't root for them."
Aw, c'mon, David, where's your sentimentality?!
"Yeah, awright, Cleveland showed a
lotta heart, they built a team the traditional
way. Put me down for Cleveland."
"I'm a National League guy,"
says Charles, "even though Florida
bought their way to the World Series."
He is unmoved by the contrast of instant
success against generations of futility:
the Florida Marlins are only four years
old; the Indians, long a laughingstock,
haven't tasted champagne since '54. "Nah.
Cleveland should suffer at least as long
as the Cubs." Charles's team by birth,
the Cubs haven't won the World Series since
1908.
David has that familiar droopy look
of truly authentic New Yorkers, like a battered
old boxer dog. The reason is obvious: his
first Series was in '55, the year the Yanks
lost to those despicable crosstown clowns,
the Brooklyn Dodgers.
David missed out on too many Yankee
championships. He was born too late, in
1947, in the wrong place -- a DP camp, in
Germany. He was four by the time he got
to New York.
"I learned to speak English
by watching baseball. That was the only
thing I could watch on TV without having
to understand English. I'd be watching a
game and my father would say 'when are you
going to read?' I'd say, 'I'm reading. I'm
reading the signs on the outfield fence.'
"I spoke only German when I
got to America, and the Jewish kids heard
me and decided to conduct war crime trials
on me." David smiles wrily. "They
decided I was a Nazi war criminal -- I was
four or five years old -- so they tried
to hang me. They put a rope around my neck.
At that point I decided I wasn't speaking
German anymore."
David made aliya in 1981, and has
become more than just a fan in exile: he
devotes much of his time to developing the
sport here, as national director of the
Israel Association of Baseball.
Charles went the other way: he was
involved in baseball, and gave it up for
Zionism. He was a front-office executive
with the Dodgers from 1991 to 1994.
He's about half David's age, a sunny
Californian who looks like he was born to
be a public relations smoothie. Indeed,
that's his calling: he opened his own PR
firm here, Coast 2 Coast Communications,
after three years as the Dodgers' assistant
director of publicity, the number two guy
in a 10-person PR staff.
You're right. It was a dream
job. He was buddy-buddy with the players,
traveled with the team, and even accompanied
them on trips to Taiwan and Japan. He went
to Mexico: once with Fernando Valenzuela,
and another time, with manager Lasorda to
check out a rumor named Mike Piazza. The
Dodgers liked him enough to pick him in
the 62nd round, and he went on to become
rookie of the year.
"Oh, what a job! I was 24 years
old. I was a Dodgers executive. I had to
live the corporate life, and carry out the
policies of the club, but I also had to
build a relationship of trust with the players."
He was close to owner Peter O'Malley, to
players like Brett Butler, Chan Ho Park,
Burt Hooten and Jim Gott. "And I got
to meet Sandy Koufax."
His highlights? "Walking out
onto Wrigley Field as an official -- I grew
up in Chicago, a Cubs fan. Another great
moment was witnessing the Expos' Dennis
Martinez pitch a perfect game in LA. Carew
getting his 3,000th hit. And my World Series
experience."
The Dodgers didn't make it to the
championships during his tenure, but Charles
did: he was selected by the National League
in 1993 to work the Series. "I was
part of the PR staff, assigned to the Atlanta
Braves clubhouse when they lost to Toronto."
Charles brightens like a floodlight. "It
was absolutely incredible. I saw the World
Series from a completely different persepective
-- from the clubhouse, behind the scenes,
working with the players and the media."
How could he leave all that?
Charles takes a long, pensive breath.
"I saw the game was in trouble. I felt
the strike coming. I saw good people working
in baseball were leaving.
"And there was one event that
happened that changed me. I was with the
club in Montreal, when Don Drysdale had
a heart attack and died in his hotel roomn.
Here was a guy who gave his life to baseball,
and he died alone in a hotel room in a foreign
country. At what price do you give up your
personal life for the game? I wanted more
for my life. Personal achievements.
"People still look at me like
I'm nuts."
He resigned during spring training
1994 and announced his plans to move to
Israel. If folks thought he was nuts then,
they must have wondered about Charles when
two weeks before his departure...
"Goldstein. And CNN was going
crazy with it, and everyone said, 'You don't
want to go there.' But the players understood.
A lot of them were very supportive. Gott,
Orel Hershiser, Butler, Tim Wallach. Several
even approached me about coming here to
do clinics. A lot of them are religious,
born-again Christians, and they really want
to come here."
The Dodgers threw Charles a farewell
party, and someone from scouting said, "Listen,
if you find a lefthander like Koufax over
there, let us know."
David's IAB has 1,200 youngsters
organized into almost 100 teams -- despite
a chronic shortage of playing fields and
coaching staff.
There's a source of untapped talent
that he may never get to. Charles giggles:
the Palestinian shabab, the rock-throwing
boys of the intifada. "Hey, some of
those guys have good arms! Their mechanics
are a bit screwed up, but they can be taught."
"So? We'll bring in a pitching
coach," David deadpans. He's proud
to say he does have talented kids who could
cut it in college ball -- including his
own son.
But is there, in a country without
a single top-notch baseball field, a true
phenom to make scouts gaga?
Yes, both Charles and David exclaim.
"There's an Israeli who's got
a tremendous arm," Charles says. "If
he wasn't so small I'd have recommended
him to the Dodgers. Tremendous arm.
His name's Tal Kitaoka. His father's Japanese,
his mother Israeli. He just finished the
army. I'm telling you, his arm, it's a bullet.
Problem is, he's 5'3"."
David shakes his head in awe. "He
hits a ton, he can outrun a car, fastest
kid I've ever seen. Multi-talented. We've
already spoken about him to the president
of the Southern League."
What a dream for David if this kid
makes it to the majors.
What a nightmare if it's with the
Dodgers.
