Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn't Want to Be One

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More About This Book

Overview

One of the reasons baseball fans so love the sport is that it involves certain physical acts of beauty. And one of the most beautiful sights in the history of baseball was Hank Greenberg's swing. His calmly poised body seemed to have some special set of springs with a trigger release that snapped his arms and swept the bat through the air with the clean speed and strength of a propeller. But what is even more extraordinary than his grace and his power is that in Detroit of 1934, his swing—or its absence—became entwined with American Jewish history. Though Hank Greenberg was one of the first players to challenge Babe Ruth's single-season record of sixty home runs, it was the game Greenberg did not play for which he is best remembered. With his decision to sit out a 1934 game between his Tigers and the New York Yankees because it fell on Yom Kippur, Hank Greenberg became a hero to Jews throughout America. Yet, as Kurlansky writes, he was the quintessential secular Jew, and to celebrate him for his loyalty to religious observance is to ignore who this man was.

In Hank Greenberg Mark Kurlansky explores the truth behind the slugger's legend: his Bronx boyhood, his spectacular discipline as an aspiring ballplayer, the complexity of his decision not to play on Yom Kippur, and the cultural context of virulent anti-Semitism in which his career played out.

What Kurlansky discovers is a man of immense dignity and restraint with a passion for sport who became a great reader—a man, too, who was an inspiration to the young Jackie Robinson, who said, "Class tells. It sticks out all over Mr. Greenberg."

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Baseball legend Hank Greenberg is remembered not only for hard hitting and an imposing physical presence, but for bravery in facing down bigots who resented the Jewish athlete's ethnicity. The Bronx-born kid achieved stardom with the Detroit Tigers in the ‘30s, served in WWII, and eventually took a management position. Early notoriety came when he famously refused to play ball on Yom Kippur. Jewish parents of that era were less than anxious for their sons to pursue sports, preferring education and the more cerebral professions that followed. While some Jewish athletes changed their names, Greenberg stood proud, even though Detroit had been characterized as the most anti-Semitic city in America, helped in large part by Henry Ford's notoriously anti-Jewish newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. Though Greenberg "was sensitive to his responsibility to his people, the grandness of that role conflicted with his natural humility." He was an ardent supporter of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American major-leaguer, as well as others who suffered prejudice. Kurlansky's (The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macorís) slim volume puts a fascinating period of sports history into a vivid cultural context. (Apr.)
Boston Sunday Globe

"The prolific Kurlansky has outdone himself."—Jan Gardner, Boston Sunday Globe

— Jan Gardner

More Reviews (11) Fewer Reviews
Forward

“Kurlansky’s book is an excellent addition to the Yale University Press Jewish Lives series. It is, I suspect, no accident that most of the titles, both those already published and the projected volumes deal with secular Jewish lives. A few of those lives, like the one Kurlansky has given us in this well-written and unpretentious biography, may also speak of the need to hit.” — Leonard Kriegel, Forward 

— Leonard Kriegel

Jewish Journal

"Context is vital to the craft of biography. Kurlansky provides excellent context over and over. What he offers about Greenberg playing or not playing on Yom Kippur constitutes valuable context about Judaism"—Steve Weinberg, Jewish Journal

— Steve Weinberg

National Jewish Post & Opinion

"If this fine biography is any sample of [the series] previously published and those still to come, these publications will make a stellar contribution to our understanding of notable Jews. . . . Mark Kurlansky offers an excellent, well-written analysis of the life and times of Hank Greenberg. . . . This account of Greenberg''s life is thorough, insightful, and well-written."—Morton I. Teicher, National Jewish Post & Opinion

— Morton I. Teicher

Newark Star-Ledger

"Mark Kurlansky, a historian and a fan, zeroes in on Greenberg like Hammerin'' Hank teeing off on a fastball."—Allen Barra, Newark Star-Ledger

— Allen Barra

Post and Courier

"Kurlansky effectively adds admirable layers to a ''quintessential secular Jew'' often misunderstood and certainly deserving of more appreciation, on and off the field."—Post and Courier

San Francisco Chronicle

"Mark Kurlansky, a historian and a fan, zeroes in on Greenberg like Hammerin'' Hank teeing off on a fastball."—Allen Barra, San Francisco Chronicle

— Allen Barra

The Washington Post

"It''s the best of the lot because it kept surprising me."—Steven V. Roberts, The Washington Post

— Steven V. Roberts

The Weekly Standard

"Well-written, clear and concise."—Zachary Munson, The Weekly Standard

— Zachary Munson

USA Today

"A graceful appreciation."—Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

— Bob Minzesheimer

Library Journal
This new Yale series hinted at its breadth with its first three subjects: Moses Mendelssohn, Sarah Bernhardt, and Solomon. Now stepping up to the plate is one of the Detroit Tigers' all-time greatest players. Kurlansky (Cod) shows how the American Jewish experience can be a secular one, that playing baseball served as part of the Americanization process for immigrant families, an act of assimilation. Hyman Greenberg, born in New York to Romanian Jewish immigrants, became Hank Greenberg, the American baseball hero, perhaps idolized by American Jews precisely because he operated against Jewish stereotypes. Kurlansky has interviewed members of the Greenberg family, as he also places his story in a broader cultural context. For fans of baseball's golden greats, of interpretive biographies, and of this series.—M.H. — "Sneak Peak," Booksmack! 1/20/11
Bill Scheft
…Mark Kurlansky's scholarly slice of Hank Greenberg is always winning…Kurlansky is refreshingly outward-looking. Everything is put in context, especially the relationship of Jews to sports and sports to Jews as a path to assimilation.
—The New York Times

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780300136609
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Publication date: 3/29/2011
  • Pages: 192
  • Sales rank: 128,525
  • Series: Jewish Lives Series
  • Product dimensions: 5.60 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Mark Kurlansky
Mark Kurlansky

Mark Kurlansky is most recently the author of The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macorís. Kurlansky has written, edited, or contributed to twenty books, which have been translated into twenty-five languages and won numerous prizes. His previous books Cod, Salt, 1968, and The Food of a Younger Land were all New York Times best-sellers.

Biography

Blessed with extraordinary narrative skills, journalist and bestselling author Mark Kurlansky is one of a burgeoning breed of writers who has turned a variety of eclectic, offbeat topics into engaging nonfiction blockbusters.

Kurlansky worked throughout the 1970s and '80s as a foreign correspondent in Europe and Mexico. He spent seven years covering the Caribbean for the Chicago Tribune and transformed the experience into his first book. Published in 1992, A Continent of Islands was described by Kirkus Reviews as "[a] penetrating analysis of the social, political, sexual, and cultural worlds that exist behind the four-color Caribbean travel posters."

Since then, Kurlansky has produced a steady stream of bestselling nonfiction, much of it inspired by his longstanding interest in food and food history. (He has worked as a chef and a pastry maker and has written award-winning articles for several culinary magazines.) Among his most popular food-centric titles are the James Beard Award winner Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (1997), Salt: A World History (2002), and The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell (2006). All three were adapted into illustrated children's books.

In 2004, Kurlansky cast his net wider with 1968: The Year that Rocked the World, an ambitious, colorful narrative history that sought to link political and cultural revolutions around the world to a single watershed year. While the book itself received mixed reviews, Kurlanski's storytelling skill was universally praised. In 2006, he published the scholarly, provocative critique Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea. It received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Despite occasional forays into fiction (the 2000 short story collection The White Man in the Tree and the 2005 novel Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue), Kurlansky's bailiwick remains the sorts of freewheeling colorful, and compulsively readable micro-histories that 21st-century readers cannot get enough of.

    1. Hometown:
      New York, NY
    1. Date of Birth:
      December 7, 1948
    2. Place of Birth:
      Hartford, CT
    1. Education:
      Butler University, B.A. in Theater, 1970

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Prologue: The One Holy Day 1

1 Jewish Hitting 16

2 A Beautiful Swing 28

3 Greenberg's Time 52

4 Becoming Hank 62

5 Henry B. Interrupted 95

6 Escaped at Last 124

Epilogue: More Holy Days 145

Bibliography 149

Acknowledgments 153

Index 155

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