New Jersey Jewish News
Sports Feature
The story of baseball’s ‘Designated Hebrew’ proved a tough pitch for NJ sportswriter
He wasn’t Hank Greenberg. He wasn’t Sandy Koufax.
Heck, he wasn’t even Shawn Green, a contemporary Jewish favorite.
What Ron Blomberg was was the first designated hitter, an invention that made its major league debut on April 6, 1972.
But Blomberg claims he’s been a DH his whole life — “Designated Hebrew,” that is.
The Yankees made the Atlanta-born athlete the number one draft pick in the nation in 1967. He was hailed (and hyped) as “the next Mickey Mantle,” and in a sense he was. Like Mantle’s, Blomberg’s playing days were cut short due to injuries. Nevertheless, he became a popular figure with New York’s Jewish fans.
Prior to an appearance at Morristown Jewish Center-Beit Yisrael in April 2005, Blomberg recalled the details of his walk — literally speaking — into the history books for NJ Jewish News.
He was recovering from a hamstring injury when Yankees manager Ralph Houk told him he would fill the role of designated hitter in the team’s season opener against the Boston Red Sox.
“What do I do?” Blomberg asked, unfamiliar with the responsibilities of the assignment.
“You just go up to bat four times, as if you were a pinch hitter,” his manager told him.
Blomberg walked with the bases loaded to drive in a run. To mark the historic occasion, his bat and jersey were sent to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown.
“It was an unusual artifact because it’s the only bat in the Hall of Fame because of a walk,” said Dan Schlossberg, a Fair Lawn resident who collaborated with the ex-Yankee on Designated Hebrew: The Ron Blomberg Story (Sports Publishing LLC).
For Schlossberg, his 31st baseball book was something special.
“It’s different because it’s my first Yankee book. But certainly it’s the first book about a Jewish ballplayer I’ve ever done, and it’s near and dear to my heart because of that.”
There are three audiences for the book, Schlossberg said: Jews, Yankee fans, and, because of Blomberg’s role as the first designated hitter, readers interested in baseball history.
“I don’t know anything about any other sport. I’ve never seen a Super Bowl or a Stanley Cup playoff or an NCAA Final Four Game. I’m all baseball, all year long,” said the author.
Schlossberg, who will be 58 on May 6 (“The same age as Israel.”) said his latest project proved a bit of a challenge.
“[Ron] is a great guy,” he said, describing Blomberg as L’il Abner incarnate. “He’s got a heart of gold, but his attention span is easily distracted.” Their conversations were constantly interrupted by phone calls. In fact, while Schlossberg was speaking with NJJN, Blomberg was on another line. “It was a lot of fun working with him, but it was really stressful.”
One problem that arises in collaborating with athletes is determining the veracity of anecdotes that seem to increase in drama and stature over time. Whether they’re simply the products of a faulty memory or mild (or not so mild) exaggeration, the writer has to guide his subject to the paths of truth.
Schlossberg, a former Associated Press sportswriter, used a variety of sources to verify some of Blomberg’s recollections. “Some of those sources disagreed because at the time he was interviewed by those people, he exaggerated also, or he didn’t remember.
“His career wasn’t that long; he should have remembered,” Schlossberg laughed.
The book was originally supposed to be written by sportswriter Phil Pepe and Marty Appel, who was the public relations director for the Yankees when Blomberg was on the team, Schlossberg said. They passed on the assignment because they thought Blomberg couldn’t keep his focus long enough to complete the project.
The editors then approached Schlossberg. “I viewed it as a challenge,” he said.
He was right. The first attempt, to use football terminology, suffered from a false start. “[T]he manuscript was rejected…. They thought it was too superficial, barely skimming the surface. One of the reasons was because I interviewed only him; it was supposed to be an autobiography…. He just wasn’t forthcoming.”
Schlossberg went to work filling in the missing pieces. He interviewed Blomberg’s first wife, Mara, whom, coincidentally, Schlossberg knew from his days at Syracuse University. He also spoke with Blomberg’s son Adam, who is completing an anesthesiology residency at Harvard, and daughter Chesley, a sophomore at the University of Alabama. He also got a wealth of information from Sheldon Stone, a New Jersey-based attorney and Blomberg’s agent during his playing days.
“Once [the manuscript] was rejected, I was determined to go back to Ron after I interviewed all these other people, and I had a whole bunch more questions for him. It worked out pretty well in the end because he was much more forthcoming. The editor loved what I did, and now we have the book.”
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