Navs owner recalls role in Israel baseball league

Phil Rosenfield’s North Shore Navigators have navigated their way to a playoff berth in the New England Collegiate Baseball League. Yet Rosenfield can’t forget the rough waters and icebergs in the season he helped run a professional baseball league in Israel.”As owner of the 2006 Holyoke Giants, I met Dan Duquette, former Boston Red Sox general manager,” Rosenfield, a Swampscott native, said. “Duquette was the owner of the Berkshire Dukes in our New England Collegiate Baseball League. He was famous as the GM who signed Manny Ramirez with the Boston Red Sox, which resulted in two World Series championships. I think he is the smartest baseball guy I ever met.”Duquette told Rosenfield of a plan to start a pro baseball league in Israel. Duquette would be director of player development and Larry Baras, who created the idea of the league, was director.Rosenfield, vice president of JN Phillips Auto Glass, knew that soccer was king in Israel and basketball a distant second, with baseball far off on the horizon.Duquette recruited the players, including Jewish and Dominican athletes. A draft was held in New York City, an event hosted by TV sportscaster Len Berman.”I did the drafting for the Tel Aviv Lightning,” recalls Rosenfield, a league advisor. “In all, there were six teams, including clubs from Petah Tikva and Kibbutz Gezer.”Our Tel Aviv stadium was the best facility in the league, but most fields were of the high school variety. One of our players was Nathan Fish, a former teammate of Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis, who is also Jewish.” (As a minor-league player, Youkilis was thought to be Greek and was tabbed The Golden Greek of Walks.)The historic first Israel league game was something out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. The games were slated for seven innings, and when the final inning of the inaugural contest (in front of an audience of 4,000) was complete, one pitcher had hurled a perfect game, and the other had recorded a no-hitter. However, the score was deadlocked at 0-0. In a tie situation, the league rule was to hold a Home Run Derby to determine the winner.Three players from each squad batted, getting 10 swings each. Near the end of the Derby, the score remained tied. The last batter had one swing left and hit a long homer. This, however, did not end the game.”To our disbelief,” Rosenfield said, “the losing manager ran out of his dugout to protest the hitter’s bat, saying it was illegal, something about the grain in the wood.”League commissioner Dan Kurtzer had to be asked to come onto the field to determine what to do. (Kurtzer’s previous positions had included serving as an American ambassador to Israel, Egypt and Jordan at different times, and he was often involved in life-and-death decisions, including potential world war.) Eventually, he allowed the home run to count, thus ending the evening.Duquette summed up the first Israel contest: “Not to worry. After all, it was the first baseball game in the Holy Land in 5,000 years.”