Update on my pitching

Here are some interesting stats on my pitching. It is hard to say I have pitched well with an ERA above 7.00. But, it might not be as grim as it looks and here is why.

I have appeared in 15 games thus far (incidentally this is the most in the IBL.) Of those 15 appearances I have started 4 games and relieved in 11.

Batting average against me in those 11 relief appearances is .172
Batting average against me in my last 5 relief appearance .074
Batting average against me in my 4 starts is .355

Below is a chart demonstrating the gap between my relief and starting appearances as well as the improvement over the season.



Also interesting is my success against the mighty Blue Sox line up. I have pitched six innings against the Blue Sox and have given up only one hit and no runs. On the other hand, my pitching against Raanana, not a strong hitting team, has been terrible.



So what does it all mean? Well it demonstrates that so much of pitching is psychological. I never know when I am coming in to relieve. I am told to go warm up and I come in when I get the call. The second half of the season I have literally been lights out relieving no matter who I have faced. Starting is a whole different animal. I know a few days ahead of time that I will be starting and I do a lot of research on the hitters and develop a plan for the batters. I spend the days before a start thinking pretty much incessantly about the upcoming game. It turns out that this doesn’t work for me. Perhaps I over think and get to fine with my plan for each batter, perhaps the buildup gets me too tense. I am not sure, but I am starting Wednesday’s game and will be taking a different tact. I will only pitch the first three innings so I can be available for the playoffs. By the way, don’t count the Pioneers out, we might go all the way.

I also spent most of the season reworking my whole approach (mechanical as well as philosophical) to pitching. In the process I walked too many hitters and before I knew it I could not find my way back. Finally, with the exception of one bad outing where my arm muscles kept cramping up (deltoid and bicep of throwing arm, weird)I have solved that problem during second half of the season.

So I have shown lately that I have the “stuff” to be successful in this league, I just have to learn how to manage my approach to starting and leave the first half of the season walkathon in the past.

Winding Down

The season is winding down. By this time next week the first IBL season will be in the books and most of the players will be on planes heading home. Yesterday at the game I was trying to take in as much as I can knowing that soon it will just be a memory. Tomorrow is our last scheduled game at Gezer. I love that place. I say this as a romantic, a lover of baseball and of Israel.

As a pitcher…it has to be one of the least friendly parks ever created. A rough field where bounces take balls in many unpredictable directions, a non uniform slope upwards towards the outfield fences that are 280 feet down right field line and 316 to left. Gezer is the land where many routine fly balls have become homeruns. There is more but I think you get the picture.

But I will miss baseball here. The fans are enthusiastic, the field is situated among sunflower fields and rolling hills. I was talking to Ron Blomberg before a game at Gezer and he looked at the hills in the outfield and said “these are the hills of King Solomon.” Games usually end around twilight to beautiful sunsets. Some of my favorite moments this summer are going into the seats after a game to sign autographs for excited kids while watching the sun set. It is the field of dreams, it is perfect.


Twilight at Gezer


Homerun Derby at Gezer


Autographs at Gezer








You can see many great IBL pictures here

In Israel Paralell Worlds Converge

In 1972 I was 11 years old and lived in Israel. There was no baseball in Israel back then but I would take my glove and a tennis ball and throw endlessly against a stone wall in front of our house. I would pretend to be a Major Leaguer pitcher and the erratic bounces off the uneven wall were hits that I fielded. In those days the Jerusalem Post would publish the Major League standings once a week, delayed a couple days of course. I would go out early in the morning to beat my Dad to the newspaper which was delivered to our front stairs. I would glance at the standings outside and then bring him the paper. I loved baseball.

In 1972 Ken Holtzman was an elite Major League pitcher. He won nineteen games for the Oakland A’s that year and helped his team win the World Series by pitching them to victories in game one and four against the Cincinnati Reds. Kenny did not know me then but we were connected. I was a southpaw like Kenny, Jewish like Kenny and loved baseball like Kenny.


In 1972 the Olympics were held in Munich Germany. It was a big event in Israel, it was on TV and in my youthful naiveté I thought the Israeli athletes were sure to bring home some gold. When the Palestinian terror faction, Black September, shot dead two members of Israel’s Olympic team and took nine other team members hostage, I was heart-broken. Watching the masked terrorists on TV hour after hour and feeling the tension the adults around me were enduring, was disconcerting and haunting. Somehow I just felt that the athletes would be OK, they would survive. I was on the couch about 10 feet away from my mother when she answered the phone, suddenly she burst into tears, my world stood still, she sobbed, "they murdered all of the athletes." That moment sucked the naiveté of my youth from my core and replaced it with a gut punch whose impact will stick with me the rest of my life.


Back in the USA, upon hearing the news of the massacre Kenny and his Jewish teammate Mike Epstein walked around town for hours in shock. That day Kenny was scheduled to pitch against the second place White Sox. In an act that Kenny described as “the appropriate thing to do” he walked to the mound that day wearing a black arm band to honor and mourn the murdered Israeli’s. He wore it for all nine innings that he pitched and he beat the White Sox 9-1.

Kenny and I lived in parallel worlds. Worlds that were deeply connected yet were never to connect. In an unlikely twist the creation of the IBL altered the paths of our lives. On Monday Kenny will be leaving Missouri and I New Hampshire. We will journey thousands of miles away from our homes and converge at a another home that we share. Home plate in the Jewish Home land.