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If you film it, will they come? Brett Rapkin hopes so. He’s busy working on Hardball in the Holy Land, a documentary about the IBL’s first season.

“I felt like I had to tell it, even if it meant spending my own resources on it,” he told NJ Jewish News from his editing room in Manhattan. “It spoke to me as a Jewish kid growing up, playing baseball. It’s an amazing intersection of two passions.”

Rapkin, 28, had never been to Israel prior to his trip to work on filming the June 26 opening day game, which was condensed to two hours and aired on PBS. “Israel had never been a passion for me,” he said. “Baseball got me [there].”

He praised Israel’s local sports television personnel for quickly adapting to the nuances of a game that has different technical requirements from basketball and soccer, two “back-and-forth” sports that are favored in the Jewish state.

“It was exciting. The TV crew that the IBL has…were consummate pros,” said Rapkin, who added that they just needed to be educated “in the flow of the game. It was a great experience to be able to work with them. It was a crazy day for me because I was producing the game and the footage for the documentary.”

Hardball covers all aspects of the IBL, from executive meetings to tryouts to the player draft. He and his crew shot segments on the players and their daily lives. “We have shots with players saying goodbye to their families. It was pretty emotional stuff. Some of the guys are bachelors and they’re on their own, but the others have families that they had to say goodbye to for the summer.”

Rapkin, whose credits include documentaries for A&E and HBO Sports, shot about 70 hours of video, which will eventually be edited down into a two-hour-or-so finished product. “Documentaries are shaped and written in the editing room,” he said. “There’s a great breadth and depth of material.” He hopes to be finished with his project in the fall and distribute it to both mainstream and Jewish film festival circuits, as well as making it available on DVD.

“It’s an ongoing story,” Rapkin said, looking forward to the league’s sophomore season. “It would be great to continue to follow it.”

The opening day DVD is available through the IBL Web site.