In the third game of the World Baseball Classic last month, a nineteen-year-old unknown struck out a thirty-year-old veteran. Such an upset would be noteworthy in itself, but what makes the event truly surprising is that the pitcher was an Orthodox Jew named Jacob Steinmetz, playing for team Israel, and the batter Manny Machado, considered one of the best of the Major League, playing for the powerhouse team of the Dominican Republic. (During the regular season, Machado is the third baseman for the San Diego Padres.) Elli Wohlgelernter writes:
It was July 13, 2021 [when] the Arizona Diamondbacks selected seventeen-year-old Jacob with the 77th pick of the amateur draft, a month after he graduated from high school. It was a watershed pick: Jacob became the first practicing Orthodox Jew drafted to play organized baseball, dating back to the first draft in 1965.
Arizona wasn’t worried about caring for Steinmetz’s religious needs when they drafted him. According to the scout [Alex] Jacobs, the senior vice-president and assistant general manager of the Diamondbacks, Amiel Sawdaye, is a practicing Jew . . . who explained the inside baseball of kosher to the front office . . . and assured them that it would not be a problem.
“In fact,” Jacobs said, “they called his agent right before they were going to draft him and said, ‘Listen, we’re going to accommodate everything you could possibly need to make this as comfortable as possible for you so that you can be set up for success.” And so they have. Whereas once upon a time, Jacob had to pack his mom’s sandwiches in a cooler bag when traveling to tournaments, frozen packages will now be shipped to the team from a catering company once a week to wherever Jacob is playing.
As for Machado, he proved himself a model of sportsmanship, autographing a ball for Steinmetz after the game with the words, “Great pitch. Keep working. The sky’s the limit.”
Read more on Times of Israel: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-legend-of-jacob-steinmetz/