Fantasy Meets Reality

I wonder how many people can say they’ve shared a Sabbath dinner… with a New York Yankee.

I suspect those two things don’t turn up in the same sentence very often.

But recently I spent a Sabbath with a whole bunch of Yankees, and I’ll never forget it.

I’m just back from Yankees Fantasy Camp, at their spring training facility in Tampa, Florida.

When you’re a fan, Fantasy camp is the ultimate up-close-and-personal-experience you dream about. You wear the pinstripes. You play ball on the same field the pros do. You share the same clubhouse. And you meet the Legends… the old players… the guys you idolized as a kid, watching them on TV.

I’m a lifelong Yankee fan and for years I desperately wanted to go to Fantasy Camp. But I’m also an Orthodox Jew. I keep Kosher, and I observe the Sabbath. Fantasy Camp was always out of the question for me, because of the food, and because I’d miss the one event everybody waits for… the high point of the whole camp… the Dream game when the campers play the Legends. They do it on the last day of camp… Saturday.

But this year, the Bombers made some changes. To accommodate five or six Orthodox folks like me, the club brought in kosher food. They gave us our very own Kosher Dream game, on Wednesday. And best of all, they gave us Shabbat.

We had a synagogue set up in a small dining room, next to the fitness center. Friday evening we gathered, the kosher campers, their families, and a local rabbi. We lit the candles. We blessed the wine. We sang the prayers. We had our Sabbath meal. It felt very warm, friendly and familiar. And we had some special guests.

It’s a Fantasy Camp tradition that on Friday night the campers take the Legends out to dinner. But three Yankees came to our dinner first, before they went off to theirs. Ron Blomberg, a Yankee slugger from the 70’s and baseball’s first Designated Hitter, only now he calls himself the Designated Hebrew. Ron sat at our table, asked a lot of questions, and talked about growing up Jewish in the South, where some of his high school classmates were in the KKK.

Jesse Barfield was there too, dressed in his Sunday best. Jesse was a right fielder with a rifle arm. But on this night, he wasn’t talking baseball. Jesse spoke about the progress we’ve made in race relations. How much easier things were for him coming up, compared to the generation before. He also told us about the interracial marriages in his own family. “Color,” Jesse said, “doesn’t mean a thing to me. We’re all brothers.”

And Homer Bush. Homer’s a more recent legend… he played until 2005. Homer didn’t make a speech, but he sat with us, he put on a yarmulke and flashed a big smile. Sometimes you don’t need to say anything.

I remember looking around the room and thinking, this is surreal. This is impossible. After a week of hitting, running, throwing, spitting, cursing and scratching, The New York Yankees are helping me celebrate Shabbat!

I loved it!

You see, when you grow up Orthodox, you grow up separate. Just a little bit different, a little bit apart. You don’t go to friends’ houses for birthday parties, because the food’s not kosher. You don’t hang out with them on the weekends, because, on saturday, they’re playing ball, and you’re in the synagogue. You figure out very early, that you’re never going to be quite like everybody else. And although you’re proud of who you are, in the back of your head you can’t help wondering if the world sees you as slightly weird.

So just imagine how we kosher campers felt, when our world intersected with the Yankees world, and everybody went out of their way to include us, to accept us, and respect us. Just a bunch of good friends spending time together. I’ll treasure that forever.

Don’t get me wrong. The Dream Game was terrific! I lined a single off David Wells and got a fist bump at first base from Chris Chambliss. But, no doubt about it, the high point of my Fantasy Camp was our Sabbath together. And I know the feelings were mutual. The Sabbath ended just as the Awards banquet began. My fellow campers wanted me to sign their team photos. I explained the Sabbath still had a few minutes left. No problem. They waited. And at precisely the right moment, they put a pen in my hand.

Sunday morning Ron Blomberg and I rode the hotel shuttle back to the airport. As he got off at his terminal, Bloomie smiled and said, “Abe, I hope we see each other again. But if we don’t… I’m with ya!”

Me too, Ron. Thanks.

Thanks to all you guys.

Shabbat Shalom!