Hardball Hebrews Exhibit Has Difficulty Finding Venue
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Baseball fan (Yankees and Phillies) Howard Goldstein has spent the better part of a lifetime collecting baseball memorabilia concentrating on the subject of Jewish participation. Parts of his collection have been spotlighted on museums around the nation including Cooperstown’s Baseball Hall of Fame.
The last few years saw Mr Goldstein get serious about exhibiting his collection as a whole rather than piecemeal as Hardball Hebrews, An Artful History of Jews & Baseball. Unfortunately the timing was bad as rising antisemitism and now the Israeli/U.S. war on Iran has seen funds to Jewish museums fall dramatically and secular museums are skittish about featuring Jewish exhibits because of terrorist concerns.
The perfect location for such an exhibit, The Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame, showed initial interest but suddenly dropped the idea when the War on Iran began earlier this year.
The collection is a stunning history of Jews in baseball from the earliest days to the present.
In 1871, a 26-year-old New York City Jew of Dutch origin named Lipman Pike became the first Jew to play professional baseball.
Original cartoons and tearsheets feature such sports cartoonists as Phil Berube, Willard Mullin, Lou Darvas, Burris Jenkins, Bob Bowie, Bill Gallo, Amadee Wohlschlaeger, Bruce Stark, Ricig, Drew Litton, and more. Also Mr. Goldstein has commissioned art and portraits from Dick Perez, Graig Kreindler, CF Payne, Bart Forbes, Arthur K Miller, and James Fiorentino, among others.
Also are art from cartoonists and caricaturists artists as Drew Friedman, Dean Haspiel, Josh Neufeld, James Sturm.
Until such time as a site is found to display his collection Howard Goldstein is preparing to publish Hardball Hebrews, An Artful History of Jews & Baseball as a book which would feature the scores of Jewish baseballers such as Hank Greenberg, Andy Cohen, Phil Weintraub, Al Rosen, Cal Abrams, Mike Epstein, Bud Selig, Steve Yeager, Sandy Koufax, and many, many more. Even Paul Simon (“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?”).
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