THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HANK GREENBERG

“If you were a Jewish kid, you got Hank Greenberg on your side,” recalls one hero-worshipping fan 50 years after Greenberg retired from the baseball diamond (he died in 1986). There were Jewish ballplayers before Hammerin' Hank, a legendary batter for Detroit (and a co-owner of the Cleveland Indians) but he was the first superstar of the Great American Game who made no secret of his European-immigrant heritage, to the point of deliberating whether or not to go out on the field during Holy Days. Not just for sports addicts, Aviva Kempner's cheerful oral-history biography interviews friends, family, celebrities, and the common fans (especially rabbis) who fondly recall Greenberg's golden days of the 1930s and ?40s. The handsome, well-spoken “Moses of baseball” endured the anti-Semitic taunts amidst the customary fan and competitor insults, came discomfittingly close to dethroning Babe Ruth's record, rejected religion in general as a result of his WWII experience, and lasted long enough to see a teammate named Jackie Robinson break the League's infamous color line. Vintage newsreels, songs, and clips ranging from “Pride of the Yankees” to the Marx Brothers make a cinematic scroll of the national pastime, now and forever, that honors Greenberg and fellow stadium immortals of all creeds.