The go-ahead runs came in the eighth inning in a game that was supposed to be easier for Israel.
Team Israel’s first game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic against Nicaragua on Sunday was supposed to be its easy game before playing powerhouse teams Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Venezuela. But it took a come-from-behind win to put the Nicaragua team away.
Playing before a crowd of nearly 20,000 at Miami’s LoanDepot Park, Dean Kremer—the first Israeli pitcher drafted by an MLB team and a current Baltimore Orioles starter—threw an impressive four shutout innings. Nicaragua’s only run came on a double in the fifth inning.
Israel trailed 1-0 through eight. After Matt Mervis grounded out, Alex Dickerson singled, advancing to second after Ryan Lavarnway was hit by a pitch. Spencer Horwitz lined a single, scoring Jakob Goldfarb (pinch running). Several batters later, Garrett Stubbs, a Triple-A catcher and outfielder for the Phillies and Team Israel’s third baseman, smacked a two-run, ground-rule double to left field.
Horwitz and Noah Mendlinger crossing the plate were all that Israel needed to win 3-1, as the team’s reliever Robert Stock retired three batters in a row in the top of the ninth. The win belonged to Red Sox lefty Richard Bleier, who struck out two in relief in the eighth.
Israel sends lefty Colton Gordon of the Houston Astros farm system to the mound Monday against Puerto Rico at 7 p.m.
Dean Kremer of Team Israel pitches against Nicaragua at the World Baseball Classic on March 12, 2023. Credit: Courtesy of Major League Baseball.Joc Pederson (left) of Team Israel congratulates teammates after beating Nicaragua in a come-from-behind win at the World Baseball Classic on March 12, 2023. Credit: Courtesy of Major League Baseball.
For 24-year-old, Minor League pitcher Daniel Federman, the trip via Uber and airplane from the Baltimore Orioles spring training camp in Sarasota, Fla., to Team Israel’s facility in Jupiter three hours east across the state provided much more than just a chance to play baseball in another Florida city. It affords him the opportunity to reconnect with his Jewish roots and with fond memories of his paternal Jewish grandparents.
Federman, who grew up in the backdrop of Chanukah, Passover and Christmas, had two paternal Jewish grandparents and his mother Amy’s father is Jewish.
“My father’s Jewish side was not extremely religious, but holidays were family times. We got together as part of our heritage,” he told JNS.
The family’s Jewish connection “died out” largely when Federman’s grandparents died. “My father wishes he could but didn’t know how to do it, so it’s been a while,” the pitcher said of his father’s connection to Jewish ritual.
Federman’s father was kicked out of Hebrew school, so he opted not to subject his son to it, and Federman did not celebrate his bar mitzvah. His parents let him decide about his own religious affiliation and supported his decisions.
He played baseball and basketball at his local JCC in Davie, Fla., and almost played Maccabiah basketball before baseball took priority.
Federman said that he first learned about Israel’s World Baseball Classic team as a student at the University of Miami. His fellow baseball teammate at the university, Ben Wanger, pushed him to go on Birthright and to live a more Jewish life, and told him about the Israeli team. Federman has not been able to visit Israel yet, as he has been busy with college, the baseball draft and then his signing.
“I spoke to my mother, and she has been dying to go,” he said of an Israel trip. Ironically, they had decided to go before he got involved with Team Israel. He anticipates that they will make the trip after the baseball season.
Federman, No. 99. Credit: Team Israel.
‘Oh man, you are actually doing it!’
Peter Kurz, general manager of the Israeli team, told JNS that Federman is “definitely a pitcher with potential.”
Wanger’s recommendation of Federman to the team is the sort of thing that has been happening more after the team’s success at the last World Baseball Classic and at the 2020 Olympics.
“Many players came to us upon recommendations of others,” said Kurz. “That’s a major source of our players—simply word of mouth and recruitment by ex-players.”
Federman found out on Feb. 7 that Team Israel invited him to join the 30-member roster for the World Baseball Classic. The team’s first game is on March 11.
“It hit me: Oh man, you are actually doing it!” he said.
He has already had a chance to reaffirm his Jewish identity. The day after arriving at the team’s training center, Federman joined teammates to hear the Megillah on Purim.
With the blessing of the Orioles, he will spend two weeks with Team Israel before joining his Baltimore teammates for spring training.
“There are lots of great guys out there, and I am excited to meet them,” he said of his Team Israel colleagues. The teammates had communicated via group chat, which is par for the course in baseball. When Federman joined the Orioles organization, he also didn’t know anyone.
“The good thing about the baseball community is that there are a lot of mutual connections. You will always know guys you grew up with, and we are all there to play baseball,” he said.
He obviously hopes that he will make it to the major leagues someday, but even if he doesn’t, he thinks what he is experiencing with coreligionists is more than enough.
“Millions would trade with me. It will be unbelievable!” he practically gushed, adding that the World Baseball Classic is “the highest level of competition most will play in front of.”
Still, it has its work cut out for it at the World Baseball Classic in Miami, where some of the best teams share its division, says Peter Kurz.
Team Israel is currently battling it out in the World Baseball Classic in Miami, where it’s part of a grouping with powerhouses the Dominican Republic, which many are picking to win; Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Nicaragua rounds out the five-team Pool D, whose games will be held from March 11 to March 15.
Still, the team’s coach and general manager are optimistic. “We will be the underdog like always, and we will be overlooked,” former professional baseball player Ian Kinsler, who coaches the Israeli team, told JNS. “I have a pretty easy message for the players. We are showing up to win, not just to participate.”
Peter Kurz, the team’s general manager, told JNS that he has a lot of confidence after Israel’s “incredible run” in the 2017 World Baseball Classic. Israel was the lowest-ranked team “by far” to make the Olympics, and it won Israel’s first-ever Olympics team game.
It also came in second in the 2021 European Championship “on a team that was over 50% locally grown sabra ballplayers,” he said. “Those were incredible achievements, and they have certainly put Israel baseball on the map.”
This year, Israel’s team has 13 current or former Major League Baseball players and eight Minor League prospects, who might play in the majors next year. Ten hold Israeli citizenship.
“Team Israel will surprise a lot of people,” said Kurz.
Ian Kinsler, part of Team Israel, is playing in the World Baseball Classic in Miami from March 11 to March 15, 2023. Credit: Israel Association of Baseball.
‘It was a great trip for the family’
JNS reached Kinsler—himself one of the most decorated professional baseball players—in early March before he left his home in Texas to fly to Miami with his son, Jack.
A former four-time All-Star and holder of a World Series ring, Ian Kinsler won two gold gloves at second base during his 14-year career: eight with the Detroit Tigers. He won the World Series in 2018 with the Boston Red Sox. Throughout his career, he stole 243 bases, recorded 1,999 hits, belted 257 home runs and batted in 909 runs. In 2022, the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame inducted him.
Kinsler grew up in Tucson, Ariz., the son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. He has told reporters often that he did not grow up religiously observant but that playing for Israel, including going through the process of making aliyah in 2020 to be eligible for the Olympics, has connected him more strongly with his Jewish relatives.
He was one of five torchbearers at the Maccabiah opening ceremonies in Jerusalem in 2022 and threw out the opening pitch at a Maccabiah game. On that trip, he told JNS, he and his family spent Shabbat at the home of Jordy Alter, president of the board of directors of the Israel Association of Baseball.
“We got to experience Jerusalem and Tel Aviv,” he said. “It was a great trip for the family.”
Experiencing the history in Israel made Kinsler feel more connected, and it “brings out feelings of lineage and heritage—that it is really your people,” he told JNS. “The more you experience Israel, the more you feel connected.”
Kinsler’s 14-year-old daughter, Rian, felt like she was participating in a high school learning field trip, and his 11-year-old son, who answered every question with “King David,” ended up being right half the time, he said. At Israeli sporting events, Kinsler appreciated how relaxed it was.
The Israel team arrived in Miami on March 6 before nightfall and the start of the Jewish holiday of Purim. On Tuesday, Jordy Alter arranged a Megillah reading for the team, which also watched the 2022 film “Israel Swings for Gold,” about Israel’s baseball team competing in the Olympics in 2021.
After exhibition games on Wednesday and Thursday, the team will work out on Friday at the Miami stadium, take Shabbat off and play the first game on March 12 at noon against Nicaragua.
Frankie McLean, who for decades has been known as Sarit Edri, recently shared her incredible and impressive journey to Judaism and Israel. Now she’s returned to soccer.
When Sarah Frances (“Franki”) McLean left Washington State in 1991 for a year of study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Catholic-born, evangelical, Baptist-raised, blonde-haired college soccer player had one goal – to master the Hebrew language.
“I was Bible-believing but examining the differences between how I was raised and what I believed,” recounts McLean.
“The best way to know God’s message was to read the Bible in the original.”
“I was Bible-believing but examining the differences between how I was raised and what I believed. The best way to know God’s message was to read the Bible in the original.”Sarit Edri
During her year in Israel, McLean learned Hebrew. She also met Shimon Edri, an Israeli man from Bat Yam, who would eventually become her husband.
Frankie McLean, who for decades has been known as Sarit Edri, recently shared her incredible and impressive journey to Judaism and Israel. Now 52, she is a religious Jewish mother of six (children range in age from 5 to 26), a licensed tour guide, and a longtime resident of Efrat.
Premier League soccer ball, illustrative (credit: PIXABAY/KEVINSTUTTARD)
In recent years, Edri has returned to her soccer roots. She is a soccer coach and pioneer in creating soccer playing opportunities for girls ages 5-13, as well as women. Edri founded the Matnas of Efrat in 2010, and last year she established Efrat Kadoorregel Moadon.
Programs range from non-competitive classes to teams, which participate in the IFA, the Israel Football Association.
Edri’s 19-year-old daughter, Kerenor, has been playing soccer since age eight and is a professional soccer player on the Israel National Women’s Team.
The start of an Israel journey
Edri’s Israel journey started when she came on a Hebrew University one year program at age 21. “I was a senior in college, and most were juniors. I stood out a bit, as I was one of the only non-Jews.” Edri notes that the program started just after the Gulf War. “It had disrupted everyone’s plans.”
Fortunately for Edri, the Gulf War played a part in her meeting her future husband. “The war disrupted Shimon’s plans. He was post-army and four years older than me. He was working and was quite mature. He came to summer school at Hebrew U and was there when we arrived.”
The two quickly began to take an interest in each other. One day he remarked, “If you were Jewish, I would marry you!” Edri adds, “He didn’t give up. After I finished Hebrew U and graduated college and got a job in Washington State, he wrote me snail mail constantly and came to visit. He was clear about his intentions – but only if I was Jewish.”
Sarit and Shimon came from very different backgrounds. Sarit grew up in a small town on Fidalgo Island in Washington State, on the US West Coast. “My family was Catholic, and they became evangelicals.” Edri notes that there were no Jews in her town and that the “only way to relate to the People of the Book was from ‘the Book.’ She reiterates, “I figured the best way to know God’s message was to read the Bible in its original.”
When Edri arrived at the all-women’s Wellesley College in Massachusetts to play soccer, she continued her Bible studies. “It was not the Bible classes I expected. It was critical thinking! It challenged my beliefs.” Edri’s freshman year friends viewed her as wholesome. She recounts, “I think my friends expected me to grow up to be a pastor’s wife or a missionary in the Midwest.”
Wellesley was also Edri’s introduction to Jewish people. “My introduction to ‘real Jews’ started in the college dorms.
There were three or four Jews or halfJews in the dorms, and it was fascinating for me. They were not the Jews I had pictured from my Bible reading days. ”
She began befriending Jews on campus, taking Jewish studies classes (she was one of the first graduates of the Jewish Studies program) and visiting the recently opened kosher cafeteria on campus.
She also began to face her own crisis of faith. “It led me to critically examine the basis of Christianity. I had to examine my own faith. The foundations of Christianity for me were shaken. And I had to examine Judaism. I was looking for something that made sense to me.”
“It led me to critically examine the basis of Christianity. I had to examine my own faith. The foundations of Christianity for me were shaken. And I had to examine Judaism. I was looking for something that made sense to me.”Sarit Edri
Ultimately, Edri decided she wanted to convert to Judaism. And she is very clear about her motivation: “I didn’t do it for Shimon,” she says, clear that becoming Jewish was not for the sake of marriage alone.
EDRI RETURNED to Israel in 1993, worked as a secretary in a law firm, and began studying for conversion with an Orthodox rabbi. “I was the day secretary, and it just so happened that the night secretary was a convert from England!” Edri instantly felt a connection. “For me, it was a package – Israel, Judaism and the people.”
Edri wisely decided to hold off sharing her questions and uncertainties with her parents. “I didn’t want to speak to them about Judaism until I was really sure.”
Edri converted in November 1993 in front of a beit din (rabbinical court) in Kiryat Shmona. The beit din wanted to add a new first name and have her become Chaya Sarah. “I asked him to give Chaya as a second name so I could become Sarah Chaya,” Edri recounts. She soon after became Sarit, as there were many Sarahs already in Shimon’s family. Every year when the Torah portion of Chayei Sarah (“the life of Sarah, the 5th portion in the book of Genesis) is read in synagogues worldwide, the Edris spend that Shabbat in Hebron, the burial place of Sarah and most of the patriarchs and matriarchs.
“It is like a birthday for me,” she says.
Sarit and Shimon got married in the US in January 1994 and had a “big fat wedding” in Israel eight months later.
“I wore my wedding dress three times,” she laughs.
The Edris lived in Seattle, among the Turkish Sephardi Jewish community after they got married. Shimon had difficulties finding work in his field of banking, and the two decided to return to Israel. Sarit officially made aliyah on August 8, 1994.
One week later, on August 17, we had a 350-person wedding in Bat Yam – all done by Shimon’s family!”
Edri praises her parents for their love, support and kindness. “I can’t express enough how they raised me. They chose shalom bayit [peace in the home], which is more important than anything else. I know it was heartbreaking for my mother and father, and I told them after I converted. My father said, ‘If I know you are searching and always seeking God’s will, I can’t ask for more than that. If you are searching and becoming close to God, I am happy.’” She adds, “They also loved my husband!”
The Edris and McLeans have visited and gotten to know each other well over the years – despite religious, cultural and language differences.
As Edri looks back on the conversion and aliyah process, she concedes, perhaps a bit reluctantly, “I was naïve then. I was in the clouds.” But her love for Judaism and Israel and her exceptionally positive outlook remain until today. “I always want to see the beautiful, the exotic, the hopes, the rosy future, the nisim (miracles) –that’s what I’ve always seen and continue to see, even when there is traffic and rude people. Those things don’t penetrate me.” She adds, “The best time to come on aliyah is when you have nothing. At 21, I had nothing.”
The Edris’ married Israel journey started in Jerusalem. Shimon worked in banking, and Sarit completed the tour guide course. “After four years, we needed a cheaper place to live.” They joined a community in Tekoa, which consisted of 30 trailers. “Living there changes you. When you live close to the land in a more communal way, it makes you feel more connected to Israel and community,” she says.
This experience also helped Edri’s Hebrew. “My klita [absorption] was atypical of most Americas. I married an Israeli whose family spoke no English, so I had to speak Hebrew to survive.”
She adds, “I knew I had arrived when people spoke to me in Hebrew and I answered in Hebrew.” Since 2001, the Edris have lived in Efrat.
Sarit and Shimon are proud of their six children, who range from professional soccer player to Bratislaver Chasid. The ever-positive Edri encourages olim to “find your passion and follow it.” She is pleased that at age 52 and after almost 30 years in Israel, she has not had to give up her two passions – Israel and soccer.
