It’s a long season, and you gotta trust it. I’ve tried them all, I really have. And the only shul that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the shul of baseball.

— with apologies to Annie Savoy (Bull Durham)

What do you miss most?”

That’s the question immigrants to Israel get asked more than any other. Sometimes it elicits serious answers, sometimes personal ones.

Me, I always give the same answer.

Baseball.

Sure, I miss my family and friends, and pizza here is never going to be as good as it is in New York. And though I may not see my family and friends as much as I’d like, phone calls and e-mails keep us connected.

But baseball is different. Baseball, for serious fans, takes on a relationship more akin to that of a husband and wife. Spouses communicate every day, even from a distance, even if only for a few minutes. The definition of that relationship — a relationship based on passion — demands no less.

So, too, in baseball. Baseball, like marriage, is nothing without intimacy. Sure, I can read what my Yankees did over the last two weeks, how many games they won or lost, and see highlights on the Internet. But that is just passive knowledge and information, crucial though it is, and videos only highlight how far away I am. It never satisfies the emotional need, never quenches the thirst of passion. For that you need a constant, daily narrative that you can see, hear, and smell.

Now we’ll have it.

On June 24, the first-ever professional baseball game in Israel will be played at Kibbutz Gezer, between the Petah Tikva Pioneers and the Modi’in Miracle. The six-team league also includes the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox, Netanya Tigers, Ra’anana Express, and Tel Aviv Lightning. Each club will play 45 regular-season games, a schedule comparable to that of the low minor leagues.

Eighty players have already been signed from eight countries, including the Dominican Republic, Australia, Venezuela, and the United States. A trio of Jewish former major leaguers — Ken Holtzman, Art Shamsky, and Ron Blomberg — will manage three of the teams. The league’s first commissioner is Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is on the board of advisers.

Even with that pedigree, the detractors are already lining up, confident in their criticism that declares the venture — the brainstorm of Boston businessman and visionary Larry Baras — this century’s version of Fulton’s Folly. How can it succeed, they scoff, in a country already saturated with soccer and basketball?

For those who follow, who understand baseball, such doubters are to be pitied. While it is easy to understand their lack of faith in a Baras, or a Dan Duquette — the former major league executive in charge of the IBL’s player development — it is difficult to fathom their lack of faith in the game itself.

Baseball will succeed here, first and foremost, because it’s the greatest game in the world. But it will also succeed because Israelis, like Americans, are great sports fans, as passionate about athletics as they are about everything that has meaning in their lives.

Yes, of course building baseball in Israel is a long-term project. Duquette understands that better than anyone. Having once been in charge of player development for the Montreal Expos, among other clubs, he took on a similar challenge going up against Canada’s national religion, hockey.

Duquette built a system that was able to discover, recruit, and develop Canadian baseball players. It took awhile, but then it happened: On March 8, 2006, Team Canada beat the Team USA, 8-6, in the World Baseball Classic. Canadian baseball was on the map. To say that Israelis are less athletically inclined and incapable of playing — and eventually competing — on that level is an insult, and simply foolish. A dozen Israelis have already been signed to the league, a number that is sure to grow as the country is more exposed to the sport.

Baseball in Israel. I will get to see professional players up close, watch them show off that incredible talent, and follow their stories for 10 weeks, right here in my backyard.

I’ll still follow the Yankees, of course, but now I can follow a local team as well — the Blue Sox from Bet Shemesh. And my immigration will have become complete.