Thanks to New York Times<\/i> reporter Joshua Prager,<\/strong><\/a> Branca has a new theory: God fed Thomson that four-bagger to punish him for not observing the Jewish commandments. In the course of researching The Echoing Green, his book on the fateful Branca-Thomson duel, Prager discovered quite by accident that Branca\u2019s mother, Katherine, had been born Kati Berger, in the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary. Her parents, Ignatz and Antonia Berger, were both Jews, had were married by a rabbi, and had all their male children circumcised. <\/p>\nThrough Branca\u2019s sister-in-law, Mildred, Prager learned that Kati, upon meeting Branca\u2019s father, had written her parents asking for permission to marry a Catholic, and to raise her kids in the Catholic tradition. They answered both questions in the affirmative \u2014 so Mildred had heard from Fanni, Kati\u2019s sister, who had emigrated to America but remained Jewish. Since then, Kati lived as a Catholic, and raised her 17 children in the Church. The Berger family roots were an open secret \u2014 not quite out in plain view, but available to anyone who thought to dig.<\/p>\n
For whatever reason, Branca didn\u2019t. When Prager shared with him his family history, adding that Kati\u2019s relatives had been murdered at Sobibor, Auschwitz and Majdanek, he said, \u201c\u201cMaybe that\u2019s why God\u2019s mad at me \u2014 that I didn\u2019t practice my mother\u2019s religion\u2026He made me throw that home run pitch. He made me get injured the next year. Remember, Jesus was a Jew.\u201d <\/p>\n
Branca must have been at least half-joking, but still, there\u2019s real Old Testament sensibility in his statement. \u201cIf I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither,\u201d goes the psalm. Though Branca\u2019s career ended with an injury to his back, not his hand (it was the observant Sandy Koufax, a lefty, who got arthritis), it could pass for the work of the same El-Shaddai who sacked Saul for hoarding Amalekite livestock.<\/p>\n
In the 1950s, one of Branca\u2019s own spiritual advisors, a Jesuit, suggested he interpret his trials as a backhanded compliment: God had chosen him to yield the home run because God knew his faith was strong enough to sustain him through what would follow. Yes it was, thought Branca. And so ever since, even as the goat endured public discourteousness for 60 years, he praised God, reciting every morning and night the \u2018Our Father,\u2019 a \u2018Hail Mary\u2019 and a couplet of his own: \u2018Make me worthy of your love; make my love worthy of you.'\u201d <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a good explanation \u2013it works as well for a Christian as a Jew. It evokes Job, and also that other perennial losing pitcher, Charlie Brown, whose Christmas special is considered a Biblical coup against commercialism. In any case, Branca still considers himself a Catholic. If he\u2018d known he was Jewish, he pointed out to Prager, he couldn\u2018t have performed chores for his Jewish neighbors on the Sabbath. All worked out for the best. <\/p>\n
His grandparents\u2019 liberal attitude may not have been so unusual. Conversion among Austro-Hungarian Jews was fairly common \u2014 Freud himself considered it, though he\u2019d probably have remained a Freudian in any event. Even those who remained Jewish absorbed more Catholic culture than their ancestors might, perhaps, have thought proper. Theodor Herzl referred to his bar mitzvah as a \u201cconfirmation.\u201d Both of Kati\u2019s parents shared names with Catholic saints \u2014 \u201cIgnatz\u201d is German for \u201cIgnatius\u201d \u2014 as did Franz Kafka. It would be interesting to learn whether \u201cFanni\u201d was short for \u201cFranziska.\u201d <\/p>\n
I\u2019d be curious to see how my dad, whose birthday was yesterday, would have reacted to this news. Having grown up Jewish and a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, he ended up uninterested in either sports or religion. Left to my own judgment in both areas, I became a Yankees fan at the age of five, when Reggie Jackson homered three times in game six of the 1977 World Series. Thirty years and a few months later, I entered the Catholic Church. Just goes to show that every family has its conversion stories.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The athlete whose career seems in retrospect to have been defined by an instance of decisive failure can be forgiven for imagining himself accursed, particularly if the failure itself looks wildly anomalous. When the Red Sox\u2019s Mike Torrez gave up a pennant-winning homer to Bucky Dent \u2014 normally one of the most harmless batters in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[49,132,220],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholicism","tag-judaism","tag-sports"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n