The Baseball Talmud: Koufax, Greenberg, and the Quest for the Ultimate Jewish All-Star Team

From the icons of the game to the players who got their big break but never quite broke through, "The Baseball Talmud" provides a wonderful historical narration of Major League Jewish Baseball in America. All the stats, the facts, the stories, and the (often unheralded) glory.

"The Baseball Talmud" reveals that there is far more to Jewish baseball tha

From the icons of the game to the players who got their big break but never quite broke through, "The Baseball Talmud" provides a wonderful historical narration of Major League Jewish Baseball in America. All the stats, the facts, the stories, and the (often unheralded) glory.

"The Baseball Talmud" reveals that there is far more to Jewish baseball than Hank Greenberg's powerful slugging and Sandy Koufax's masterful control. From Ausmus to Zinn, Berg to Kinsler, Holtzman to Yeager, and many others, Megdal draws upon the lore and the little-known details that increase our enjoyment of the game, including:

Which Jewish player spent a portion of his retirement as a spy

Who received $50,000 and a car to quit school and join the Major Leagues

How many players sat out of games scheduled on Yom Kippur

Which famous player chose baseball over becoming a rabbi

But this is more than just stories. Megdal, a stat geek himself, uses the wealth of modern sabermetrics to determine the greatest Jewish players at each position, the all-time Jewish All-Star Team, and how they would rate against the greatest teams in baseball history, from the 1906 Chicago Cubs to the 1998 New York Yankees.

"The Baseball Talmud" rewrites the history of Jewish baseball and is a book that every baseball fan should own.