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"American Jews and America's Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball," with Larry Ruttman

Larry Ruttman

About this program:

"American Jews and America's Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball," with Larry Ruttman

Featuring: Larry Ruttman

Most fans don’t know how far the Jewish presence in baseball extends beyond a few famous players such as Greenberg, Rosen, Koufax, Holtzman, Green, Ausmus, Youkilis, Braun, and Kinsler. In fact, that presence extends to the baseball commissioner Bud Selig, labor leaders Marvin Miller and Don Fehr, owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Stuart Sternberg, officials Theo Epstein and Mark Shapiro, sportswriters Murray Chass, Ross Newhan, Ira Berkow, and Roger Kahn, and even famous Jewish baseball fans like Alan Dershowitz and Barney Frank. In his edifying and entertaining book, American Jews and America's Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball, Larry Ruttman tells the life stories of these and many others, compiled from nearly fifty in-depth interviews and arranged by decade. Together they tell, as no previous book has, the history of the larger-than-life role of Jews in America’s favorite pastime.

Larry Ruttman is an American attorney and author best known for his two books of biographical cultural history, Voices of Brookline and American Jews and America's Game, and for his memoir, My Eighty-Two Year Love Affair with Fenway Park: From Teddy Ballgame to Mookie Betts.

This event took place on November 19, 2020. It was presented online by the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA.

This recording was digitized and added to the library in September 2022.

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