Two Jews and God Can't Save Texas's Bacon in World Series

Thirteen Jews appeared in Major League baseball games this past season according to Jewish Baseball News ("News and Stats on Jews with Bats"). Some are household names such as Ryan Braun of the Brewers (who barely missed winning the National League batting championship this season with a .322 average) and Kevin Youkilis of the Red Sox, and some just had the proverbial cup of coffee, or as we Jews like to say, bowl of borscht, in the majors. Oddly, none of of the thirteen plays for the Tribe (for non-baseball fans, that's the Cleveland Indians). But two, Ian Kinsler and Scott Feldman, both star players, are on The Texas Rangers who, twice last night, in the bottom of the 9th and 10th innings, were one strike away from their first-ever World Series championship only to let it slip away when David Freese homered in the bottom of the 11th.

Scott Feldman

Ian Kinsler

Freese, it should be noted, is not Jewish. Now, normally crankyjewishguy (CJG) wouldn't point this out, but when he was interviewed on the field immediately after his series-tying home run (and it should be noted that it was Freese, a local St. Louis boy, who also had the triple that drove in two runs trying the game in the bottom of the 9th), he didn't thank God, thank God, he just seemed like an excited kid on whom fortune had smiled. Now, for the purposes of this blog post let's keep in mind that Freese's team actually won the game.

By contrast, Josh Hamilton's team, the Rangers, lost the game, despite a two-run home run Hamilton launched into the seats in the top of the 10th inning. In his post-game interview Hamilton had this to say: "The Lord told me it was going to happen before it happened. You hadn't hit a home run in a while. You're about to right now." The Lord must have a great but ironic sense of humor, though, because he (or she) apparently didn't see fit to also tell Hamilton that it wasn't going to matter.

So, where does this leave Kinsler and Feldman? CJG isn't really sure but he does know it leaves the Rangers eight men short of a minyan.