This department—usually described as a place for reports on cultural and social trends—this month extends its boundaries to include William Schack’s description of what was perhaps the first Palestinian baseball game; and an article by Eric Werner on Jewish liturgical music. Mr. Schack (who wrote this article with seven “assists” from Sarah C. Schack) is less known as first baseman than as an art critic, author of And He Sat Among the Ashes, a biography of the painter Eilshemius. Mr. Schack is at present compiling an encyclopedia of plastics. Dr. Werner is a well-known musicologist on the faculty of the Hebrew Union School of Education and Sacred Music in New York City.

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One June day in 1927 the Americans in Jerusalem, hitherto outwardly respectable, were seen making their way to the open spaces of the city wearing common caps, old pants, and abraded shoes. People heard settlers and tourists from the United States, who had only casually greeted each before, jabbering together with lodgebrother intimacy about something which a good polyglot Palestinian, who averaged a sort-of-command of seven languages, including English, could not follow for a single sentence.

The meaning of all this unusual activity became clear when the Palestine Bulletin announced that, in honor of the Fourth of July, the American community was going to stage an exhibition of their national pastime—the first ever to be held in the country. The place, the Maccabee football field; the time, four o’clock; everybody welcome, admission free. Even the Hebrew press carried an announcement, though it could find no better equivalent for “umpire” in the ancient tongue than the watered-down shofet—judge.

What the newspapers did not report was that for us who had organized the game, it was to be a joint celebration of the 151st anniversary of American independence and the 50th birthday of a notable baseball enthusiast who also happened to be Chancellor of the Hebrew University—Judah L. Magnes.

At the recent memorial meeting for Dr. Magnes in New York, James Marshall told how, some twenty years before the game reported here, Judah Magnes, then a young rabbi, found himself frustrated in his efforts to see the play-off game for the National League championship between the Giants and the Cubs. This was the game made necessary when the Giants’ victory in the last scheduled game of the season was thrown out because of Fred Merkle’s famous boner. He first tried to pay his way in, but all the tickets were sold. Coogan’s Bluff, which offered a free if long-distance view of the field, was already packed. As he walked around the stadium wondering what to do, an ambulance clanged up to the gates; Magnes hopped on. The guards, impressed by the ambulance gong, opened the gates wide. Once inside, Magnes asked where the patient was. “What patient?” said the doctor. “I’m here to see the game!” The driver of the ambulance was the late Dr. Joseph Brettauer, the distinguished gynecologist, who told the story many years after.

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But that day in Jerusalem, although Magnes and the rest of us had enthusiasm enough to build a league, mustering eighteen players was quite another matter. Qualifications were minimal; no questions were asked as to age, sex, religion, or previous experience. Certainly I was not the man to question anybody’s credentials—I who hadn’t touched a ball in eight or nine years, and who before then, on a high school team, had set a world’s record for walks in a row, was it nineteen or twenty-one men? But despite a virtual house-to-house canvass we were still short-handed. We raided the rabbinical field for Simon Greenberg and Nachman Arnoff; we deprived Sir Ronald Storrs, Governor of Jerusalem, of his American secretary, Louis Lober, and the school system of Isidore Konowitz; we lured the visiting Dr. Maurice B. Hexter away from urgent business.

In Tel Aviv, we extracted Dr. Samuel Lewin-Epstein from his dental chambers. We ventured further north, to Haifa, where, a few years previously, a handful of American lads attending the Technical Institute had started the ball rolling with that abbreviated form of baseball known as one-a-cat. And still there were lacunae in the line-ups. Finally, someone had the inspiration to call on the Quaker school in Ramallah, and there we filled the quota.

We now needed only two things—equipment and conditioning; for, after all, we were not men of the kvutzot with flexible backs and hardened hands. There were not enough gloves among us—either fielders’ gloves or mitts—to outfit a sandlot team; the woolen mittens that used to do for us boys in Brooklyn were not available in Jerusalem in July; and it was too late to import them from the States. Of the bats on hand, one was hardly more than a sublimated rollingpin, the other was schoolboy size. Eventually another pair of bats turned up more near Polo Grounds standards.

For practice, we were generously offered the playing field of the St. George Cathedral School.¹ Unfortunately, some of the men were only free on Saturday; and their religious scruples kept them on the sidelines among the spectators. We didn’t urge them too strongly to violate the Sabbath. If they were willing to take part in the game, rehearsed or unrehearsed, who were we other bush-leaguers to complain?

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The fourth arrived. There was never any danger of the game being called on account of rain—not in Jerusalem in July. The one danger was that the temperature might be tropical. It was. Another trouble: only one of the Quaker school contingent showed up—the rest had to bone up for imminent exams. But replacements materialized somehow, and we took to the field to limber up and let the captains look us over before choosing up sides. If any talent scouts had been present, I doubt that there would have been any mad rush to sign most of us up. Captain Magnes of the “Reds,” though much older than most of us, might have stood a chance. Tall and ‘straight, and fast on his feet, he was in excellent physical shape from his long daily walks between his home in the American colony and his office on Mt. Scopus. Dr. E. M. Bluestone, captain of the “Blues,” who was then Medical Director of Hadassah, was also in pretty good form. The most you could say for the rest of us was that we had two feet and two arms each, and were willing.

Not on my journalistic honor, and only on condition that no one wrongly mentioned or omitted or mentioned in the wrong line-up sues me, do I hesitantly present the line-ups. Here they are, as my fallible memory recalls them, and not necessarily in their correct positions, either:

At four o’clock sharp, we were ready. We took a last swig of the pop or lemonade that the three Magnes boys had hauled out in a pail, and the Blues scattered to their positions. Mr. Oscar Heiser, the American consul, was there to throw out the first ball. Behind the bat, as shofet, wearing his clerical collar, was the venerable Dr. Romain Butin, of the Catholic University in Washington, who was then annual professor and acting director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. A breeze sprang up, not vigorous enough to cool us off, but enough to flutter the Stars and Stripes. The mascots were ready to chase the first foul ball or wild pitch.

“Batter up!” called the umpire.

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At that moment, a squadron of splendidly mounted Arabs fanned out over the rise above the field, their horses’ hoofs clattering on the matted rocks. Just like in the movies! The day before, we had phoned the police to” warn them what a baseball mob could be like, and there they were to preserve order. But where was the mob? There were just us players, our wives, our friends, and an assortment of mascots, making a total of—including the bottles of pop as Americans—a grand total of—but the figure must go unreported.

“Batter up!” cried Dr. Butin again.

The Reds got to our pitcher in a hurry. Added to that, our support was very much on the loose side. Bewildered, we watched while they repeatedly filled the bases and emptied them, until they had scored seven or nine runs. In our half of the first we also registered a few hits; but the Reds put up a strong, if not error-proof, defense and we only scored two or three times. I am not going to give a play-by-play account of the game. All I can say is that we played—like the Giants—strictly according to the rules. It was soon apparent that Captain Magnes, filling out his nine from last-minute dark horses, had managed to put together a team that decidedly outclassed us. As the innings slowly passed, the Reds began to make fewer errors and more hits, while the Blues began to make fewer hits and a hell of a lot more errors. How many a legitimate single of the Reds did our outfield turn into a triple! To make up for our deficiencies, we began to crab the umpire, who with priestly dignity and graciousness refrained from sending any of us to the clubhouse which wasn’t there.

To strengthen his side, Captain Bluestone yanked off second the man who couldn’t make a throw to home plate; replaced the catcher who dropped every ball by a man who only dropped every other ball; and shifted to the outfield the pitcher who seemed to have only the haziest idea of the location of the plate—it wasn’t me! The changes didn’t help too much.

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The final score was—nobody knows exactly what. One player is quite certain that it was 26-5; another is pretty sure that it was considerably higher on both sides; and in any case we all swore not to make the figure, whatever it was, public. And the final count in runs was not nearly so great as the sum of our bruises, aches, shaky knees, and strains. Anyhow, the game was a great success. We had had fun; we had celebrated two birthdays; and we had transplanted our national pastime. The Arabs didn’t know the difference between us and the Dodgers; our wives certainly didn’t; and the mascots were discreet. We drank more lemonade and pop; we missed our peanuts—no Abyssinian vendor had been go-getter enough to tempt us with pistachio nuts as substitutes; and we forgot our own performances in praising the star of the game—Captain Magnes.

The redoubtable Magnes had celebrated his 50th birthday by whacking out a double, a triple, and a homer; by stealing second, third, and home; finally, possibly to affirm his fallibility and save the faces of us young duffers—he had struck out once.

Immediately after the game, members of the Maccabees, the national athletic association, approached us for the use of our equipment. Soon they were making excellent progress in the game, and the language of the prophets was soon strained to produce the equivalents of “sock it on the nose,” “lay it down,” and—quite in the spirit of the prophets—“kill the umpire.”

The following year there was another game on the Fourth, even more successful than the first. By now, twenty years later, because of us pioneers, no doubt that sweetest of all dreams today comes to young Israelis in the night—the dream of hitting a homer in the ninth with two outs and the bases full.

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¹ Dr. Hexter reminds us that shortly before the date of the game, an archaeological find of great consequence had taken place: the discovery of the Third Wall of Jerusalem. Ironically enough, this was found right in front of the American School of Archaeology. At the time the game took place, the discovery had been already covered over, and many of our foul balls hit the mound which that rubble now made. It would be nice to be able to write that the third base was on the Third Wall, but the line from third base to home plate did parallel the Wall.

² Dr. Greenberg assures me that he played of, cf, or rf—whichever was furthest from the home plate.

³ Dr. Hexter believes that Lee K. Frankel was in the game; Dr. Bluestone has his doubts; and while I am inclined to agree with the former, I have to be loyal to my captain.