Best Baseball Players in the World

Sandy Koufax

Since the very beginnings of baseball, the sport has been dominated by great Jewish players: Hank Greenberg, Buddy Myer, Al Rosen, Ken Holtzman and many more. Perhaps most famous of all is Sandy Koufax, the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time, who actually started out as a basketball player in Brooklyn. The first person to win the Cy Young Award (for best pitcher) three times, he was also the league MVP in 1963. Koufax’s shining moment was when he refused to play the first game of the World Series because it was on Yom Kippur. He came back to lead his trailing team to the World Series victory, which earned him the Sportsman of the Year Award. Forced to retire at the young age of 30 due to arthritis, he became the youngest player ever to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Interestingly, Koufax’s last name at birth was Braun, like this year’s baseball MVP Ryan Braun, nicknamed “The Hebrew Hammer”. The son of an Israeli, he has recently said, “I am Jewish… I’m extremely proud to be a role model for young Jewish kids.”

Words of the Week

Ryan Braun

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.
– Gandhi