Baltimore Orioles

Originally appeared at Israelbaseball.org on August 10, 2026;

Walking down HaNevi’im Street in Jerusalem, not far from the famous Machane Yehuda outdoor market, a visitor to the Holy City could easily walk past an unmarked, locked iron gate tucked between old stone buildings. It was easy to miss — until you knew what was behind it. Callie Mitchell, who I had come to meet, sent me directions to help me find her home, on the campus of the Anglican International School. She instructed me to call when I arrived so she could come down and let me in.

I was immediately struck by two things — the incredible amount of space housing well-preserved old buildings, ones that even life-long Jerusalemites had never seen, and by Callie herself.

As Callie’s husband, Devin Mitchell, would explain when he joined us at the tail end of the interview around her wooden kitchen table overlooking the wraparound terrace that doubled as Callie’s office, we were looking out on the campus of the Anglican International School Jerusalem (AISJ), founded in 1962 by the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ).

Devin Mitchell, who came to Israel to teach ESL (English as a Second Language) and to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, now serves as the school’s principal. Before moving into the role — and into the house that came with it — he spent 14 years at the school as a teacher, dean of students, and head of secondary education.

The school’s own connection to Jerusalem runs deep. It traced its origins to 1847, when Bishop Samuel Gobat of Switzerland, the second Bishop of Jerusalem, opened a school in the Old City. The property itself dated to 1863, when CMJ built a sanatorium there; it later became a hospital known as Hadassah Aleph, serving as Jerusalem’s main hospital following the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. Devin pointed out that when tours of the campus were offered, there were always Jerusalemites of a certain age who reported being born in the hospital.

But I had come to meet Callie Mitchell (43), a blonde-haired, Israel- and baseball-loving Evangelical Christian, mother of four and a brain tumor survivor.

Callie opened the gate and greeted me in jean shorts, a Baltimore Orioles t-shirt, and a smile, playfully acknowledging that she intentionally chose the shirt with the Orioles’ “bird” for our interview — she remembered our earlier phone conversation, where I had disclosed my lifelong affinity for the Orioles. In return, I put on the special blue-and-white O’s hat with a Star of David that I had brought in my knapsack, a gift from my Baltimore-based sister, given out this season as part of Jewish Heritage Day.

It was an understatement to say Mitchell knew a thing or two about baseball. Her professional and personal experience with the game, at every level, could easily fill a memoir. But the fuller story of what she has built in Jerusalem — the program she inherited, nearly lost, and rebuilt — is where her real baseball legacy in Israel lies.

Inheriting a Challenge

Mitchell serves as the Jerusalem regional director for the Israel Association of Baseball (IAB), directing all operations for Jerusalem Lions baseball.

In her role, she has helped introduce baseball to five- to eighteen-year-olds as well as adults, and has handled the day-to-day nuts and bolts of running a baseball program in Israel — staying in touch with colleagues in Beit Shemesh, Gezer and Efrat, whose teams compete against Jerusalem’s; using her architect’s eye to turn soccer fields into workable baseball practice fields; and creatively sourcing balls, gloves and catcher’s equipment through Amazon and her family’s USA baseball connections.

But when Mitchell took over, there was not much of a program left to run.

“I took over a program of less than 30 kids, and 4 coaches. Only 2 of the 4 coaches returned my first year,” she recalled. The teams were fragmented — no sense of community, no way for families to see progression between age divisions.

There were not even enough balls to hold a practice. “We didn’t have any balls. I started the season with less than 12 balls,” she said — until boxes arrived as a donation from her father, Jerry Narron, a former MLB catcher, coach and manager with deep baseball connections to this day. He also sent a full set of catcher’s gear.

Helmets were another crisis entirely. The program had not had any the year before Mitchell took over, so she crowd-funded a set for every division through her home community in the USA, who “gave generously through the summer so we could have basic equipment.”

Even once she had scraped together equipment, the obstacles kept coming. “After October 7th, our storage shed flooded and we lost equipment due to mold.”

Once again, her father came through, this time via his close friend Paul Goldschmidt — the New York Yankees first baseman who played under Narron for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2017 and 2018 — who covered the cost of a new shed.

The gear and shed were only part of the crisis. Behind it sat structural problems no amount of hustle could fix alone.

A turnover of IAB Regional Directors had scattered years of institutional history and resources. At some point, the amutah (Israeli nonprofit) that IAB had originally established for the Jerusalem region became inactive and closed — leaving Jerusalem’s parent leaders without an anchor point for real operational authority.

And as IAB’s National Academy program grew, Jerusalem’s relevance shrank further: academy practices, two hours away, put a hard ceiling on which local kids and coaches could participate at the national level. “The communities that were sending more kids to academy have generally had more IAB support in the past,” Mitchell noted — a gap she is still working to close.

Her colleague David Weiss, who coaches in Karnei Shomron and manages the U15 National Team, put it bluntly in her first year: “Jerusalem is where baseball goes to die.” 

Mitchell laughed, recalling it. “Well, I believe in resurrection life, so we’re coming back from the dead.”

Rebuilding From the Roots

While Mitchell is skilled at using her resources, connections and charm to secure equipment, she views her job as much more than baseball operations and logistics. “I am a culture maker,” she said. “I facilitate the growth of a community so that people can make friends and put roots here.”

She playfully but sincerely credited her training as an architect — she holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Cincinnati — and her experience as a mom for helping her in a job that, she said, was “a little different each day.”

In her first year, before anything else, Mitchell spent much of her time simply getting to know families — understanding what they needed and identifying the small core of committed parents who would invest in the program’s future.

Community-building and player development, she said, had to move together: “I know our players will only reach their potential if we have adults committed to providing the structure and space they need to grow.”

That started with communication. “I set up WhatsApp groups, a team email and a Google Drive. I wanted to have better communication and to make sure there were at least two adults on the field at all times. And I wanted to meet the parents and find out who was committed — and to see what their needs are.”

Mitchell also organized buses for games, made sure registration and medical forms were completed properly and on time, fielded parent questions about equipment, and tracked Amazon shipping prices — a bigger deal in Israel than it sounds. Unlike with Prime membership in the USA, Amazon does not offer free shipping to Israel as a default, and between international shipping fees and Israeli import taxes, orders could get expensive fast, with free shipping only occasionally available on select items. “I look on Amazon to see what is shipping for free. When balls are being shipped for free, I buy them!”

Mitchell stressed that “the kids are the main focus of the IAB right now.” At the same time, she has not lost sight of developing homegrown talent. “We are really focusing on baseball in Israel. We want to make Israel baseball Israeli again — so local guys can play on the national team and represent Israel.”

The rebuild is paying off. “We have had 150% growth since I took over. We have gone from 30 to 75 kids playing baseball!”

This year, the Jerusalem Lions’ Little League team has been especially competitive — a result, Mitchell says, that is trickling both up and down through the program’s age divisions. Jerusalem, once written off, is proving it belongs.

A Baseball Lifer

None of this came as a surprise for a baseball lifer like Mitchell, who may well have the most impressive MLB credentials of anyone in Israel. “I went to a baseball game every day of my life from the day I was born to the day I moved to Israel in 2009.”

Mitchell honestly cannot remember her first baseball game or baseball memory. “Baseball has been life from the womb. Baseball was always home for me!”

Callie Mitchell’s family connections to baseball run deep. She humbly reported that nine of her relatives — many with the surname Narron, including her father, Jerry — have played and coached in the major leagues over the past ninety years. “The first was my great-great-uncle, Sam Narron, drafted by Branch Rickey,” the legendary baseball player, manager and team owner from the early to mid-1900s who was instrumental in breaking the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers organization.

Mitchell took out a framed picture and placed it on her dining room table: her father, Jerry Narron, in 1986, holding three-year-old Callie near the pitcher’s mound at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California. She sheepishly noted she may have been the only person in Israel who ever appeared in Sports Illustrated, which published this photo. “It’s from Family Day,” she recounted — each year, various major league teams held a day when mothers and children played a friendly game against their major league fathers and husbands.

Mitchell nonchalantly name-dropped well-known baseball figures, simply noting they were people with whom she grew up hanging out with at ballparks. “Bob Boone and the Boone brothers were my friends.” She chuckled, adding, “They were quite mischievous — they used to kick my seat!”

She also recounted hanging around a young Alex Rodriguez when he played for the Texas Rangers organization from 2001 to 2003, when her father — a longtime Rangers coach — was appointed interim manager.

Mitchell and her four younger siblings spent their childhood summers on the road with various MLB teams. While she was mostly interested in ballet, cheerleading and equestrian sports, her dad noted her “intellectual interest in baseball” from a young age, and she recalled how thrilling it was to overhear him on the phone with general managers.

Even in college, she would step away from classes to be close to her father and the game — including a memorable exchange with a professor who put together her last name and a Boston Red Sox bench coach named Narron and asked, half-joking, whether she was headed to Boston to watch the playoffs.

Mitchell admires her father as a highly respected role model on and off the field. “My dad had a 51-year career, and everyone respected his character.”

Jerry Narron was an MLB catcher for three teams from 1979 to 1987 — in his first season, serving as backup to Thurman Munson, he became the starting catcher the day after Munson died in a plane crash in August 1979. He was traded to the Seattle Mariners four months later, released in 1982, signed by the California Angels, released again in 1987, signed once more by the Mariners, and retired as a player in 1989.

He went on to coach and manage for the Orioles, Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Rangers and Cincinnati Reds, and served as a World Baseball Classic coach for Team Israel in 2017, 2023, and 2026.

Religion has always played an important part in her father’s life and career — he was involved with “baseball chapel” throughout, where each team had a pastor for regular Bible study and work with families — and Israel has always mattered to him too.

“He really loves Israel because of his own faith,” said Mitchell, noting one of the proudest moments of his career was coaching Team Israel. He carried that role with the same humility that defined the rest of his career: “If there was an Israeli or Jew who needed his spot on the team, he would have stepped down.”

Faith, Israel, and the Work Ahead

Religion plays a similarly central role in Callie’s own life. In our conversation, she frequently reached for biblical phrases and both Jewish and Christian religious concepts. “I am a baseball evangelist,” she said. “My work is my tikkun olam (repairing the world) — baseball made my whole life make sense.”

Mitchell writes for Kindred Grace, an online community for Christian women covering faith, identity and relationships, and posts regular updates on Israel through her YouTube channel, Callie Mitchell — I Will Not Keep Silent.

Long before moving to Israel in 2009, she studied Hebrew Scripture during college at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a rabbi-professor who — noting how often she asked for makeup work to travel and watch her father’s teams — eventually put together the connection between her last name and a Red Sox bench coach named Narron.

Mitchell feels lucky that she and her family get to live out their life in a city and country where the Bible stories she knew and loved took place.

And for Callie, the stakes of the work go well beyond keeping a youth sports program alive. “I’m from a family of nine professional ballplayers, and I plan on producing top athletes in Jerusalem,” she said. “We’re going to have fun together, but we’re also going to work on fundamentals the correct way and be a community that truly knows the game. It will take some time, but this is where we’re going.”

She said it herself, earlier in our conversation: she is not just building a baseball program. She is a culture maker. The rest, she is convinced, will follow.

It is the same conviction that turned fewer than a dozen balls and two remaining coaches into a program chasing something bigger than survival.

“Jerusalem is where baseball goes to die,” David Weiss had once told her.

Tell that to the seventy-five kids playing in the house that Callie built — in a city that’s been rebuilding its houses for over three thousand years.

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Original article was published on The Jerusalem Post

Eve Rosenbaum’s lifelong passion for baseball propelled her from Orioles fan to assistant GM, breaking barriers and driving the team’s resurgence.

Eve Rosenbaum, assistant general manager for Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles, playfully traces her love for baseball and the Orioles to the first Orioles game she attended with her parents, twin brother, and older brother at just two months of age.

The family regularly made the 37-mile (60 km) trek from their home in the Washington, DC suburb of Bethesda, MD, first to Memorial Stadium, the Orioles’ old home, and then to Oriole Park at Camden Yards to see their beloved team play.

“We went to 60 games a year growing up,” Rosenbaum told The Jerusalem Post. “Baseball has always been in my blood!”

In 34 short years, Rosenbaum has progressed from fan to player on a boys’ Little League baseball team while in kindergarten, to catcher on her Walt Whitman High School team, and then to the Harvard University women’s softball team. Her journey continued with internships with Major League Baseball and the Boston Red Sox. Rosenbaum then veered slightly “off course” for a two-and-a-half-year stint with the National Football League before returning to jobs with her first love – baseball.

She worked for five years in the Houston Astros organization in various roles, including manager of international scouting, before returning to her childhood favorite team, the Orioles, in 2019. Rosenbaum initially served as director of baseball development and has been the assistant general manager for the past two years.

Baltimore Orioles starting pitcher Scott Feldman works against the Toronto Blue Jays into the eighth inning to pick up his first win as an Oriole during their MLB American League baseball game in Baltimore, Maryland July 14, 2013. (credit: REUTERS/Doug Kapustin)

As assistant GM, Rosenbaum notes that “there is no such thing as a typical day.” Her main focus is on day-to-day operations, which requires a great deal of planning and anticipation.

“I am constantly thinking of the team and the roster and what we will need, trying to think ahead.” Rosenbaum focuses on trades and transactions, on players being brought up from AAA [farm teams] or sent down to the minors. She stays in touch with coaches, trainers, and strength staff about players on the IL [injured list], monitors their rehabilitation, maps out their return, and juggles the overall 40-man roster. Rosenbaum also oversees international scouting, i.e. lots of travel.

Rosenbaum acknowledges that “the season is long, and it takes a lot of commitment and time – especially during these long summers when you have the draft in the middle of July, trade deadlines, and the normal day-to-day and roster considerations, players on the IL, rehab, and the playoffs!”

She admits that she “could use more sleep” and that “it is really a nonstop grind during baseball season,” but she loves her work, which often comes with perks.

On the day of our Zoom interview from her office at Camden Yards, Rosenbaum’s “to-do list” included bringing tickets to that evening’s Orioles/Washington Nationals game to the will-call window for family and friends from her years growing up in the DC area. Other perks of the job include interacting with two of her favorite Orioles players from her childhood.

“Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray are still revered here. Now I get to work with them sometimes at spring training and see them around the ballpark – that is surreal!”

In addition to Ripken and Murray, Rosenbaum credits Kim Ng, the first female GM in Major League Baseball, as a role model. Rosenbaum, who is the fourth woman to serve as an assistant GM in the major leagues, interned for Ng while in college. Ng served as GM of the Miami Marlins from 2020-2023.

“For any woman working in sports, she helped pave the way and will always be someone I look up to.”

Rosenbaum also credits her parents for all they have done over the years.

“It takes a lot to raise twins. I think a lot of my success can be attributed to my parents. They always believed in me and pushed me forward. Whatever I wanted to do, they were very supportive. They always told me that I knew how to throw a ball before I knew how to walk!”

While there are more men than women in senior leadership positions in Major League Baseball, Rosenbaum has observed a culture change.

“There are more and more women in baseball operations, whether it is serving as AGMs, VPs, directors, analysts, strength coaches, etc. [These days] you can enter the game not necessarily with a playing background, but with more of an analytical background, or by studying statistics or computer science, or being an athletic trainer or strength coach, or through working with a minor league team and slowly working your way through the ranks. You can do that if you are a man or a woman! There are definitely more women working in baseball.”

In addition to noticing more women in baseball, Rosenbaum reports that there are “a fair number of Jews in the front offices” of baseball teams.

“We don’t ask, but we just know it!”

She has encountered other Jews at baseball’s winter meetings, where they sometimes light Hanukkah candles together in the lobby.

“There’s quite a lot of us. We don’t necessarily explicitly acknowledge each other, but we know everyone’s last name.”

Rosenbaum also knows many of the current Jewish major leaguers, including Israeli Orioles pitcher Dean Kremer. She noted that she respects his role as a player and tries to keep a professional distance.

Rosenbaum spontaneously offers, “I don’t know what it is about the unique bond between Jews and baseball, but it doesn’t seem to exist in other major sports. I don’t know why that is. I have to study the history of it. But it is kind of just there – a proud tradition.”

Rosenbaum’s early life

Rosenbaum attended Hebrew school “like pretty much everyone else” and celebrated her bat mitzvah with her twin brother at age 13. Even the bat mitzvah party reflected her lifelong love of baseball.

“The theme for my half was baseball. We had a giant baseball cake, which every now and then I come across a photo of. It was a giant 3-D baseball! I am sure my parents still have a piece of it somewhere in their freezer.”

While Rosenbaum describes herself as not “particularly observant,” she is still in touch with many of her childhood friends.

“There is a large Jewish population in Potomac and Bethesda where I grew up. My old friends get together now and then on Jewish holidays and do things like play dreidel. We have our favorite bakery that makes the best challah here in Rockville – it is called Great Harvest.”

Rosenbaum has visited Israel twice.“We took a family trip when I was 3 or 4. I was very young, so I have no memory.”

In contrast, Rosenbaum remembers many details of her later-in-life Birthright Israel trip.

“Most of my friends went in college. Due to playing softball, I wasn’t able to go then. I went at 26 – right before you max out. I went with one of my best friends growing up. It was a lot of fun.”

Rosenbaum was taken by the history she experienced and by how much the group got to do over the course of the 10-day trip.

“It still amazes me how small the country is and how you can traverse it on a bus basically in a single day and be in all of these different environments.”

She recounted experiencing “bonfires in the desert, then hiking up a mountain where it is very hot, then going to the Dead Sea and eating ice cream while floating, and doing just a lot of fun things that you hear about… and also going to the Western Wall and Yad Vashem and meeting the soldiers and going to the museums and learning the history that I never learned about was really fascinating. It was a lot of fun. It was an incredible experience.”

Rosenbaum feels there is something very special about being Jewish.

“Something that has always stood out to me about Judaism is that it is always very accepting of people. It is not about what you can’t do – it is very accepting and welcoming of people. That is a nice aspect of it. It is a culture, a lifestyle, a way of life.”

In addition to her reputation as a young, up-and-coming mover and shaker in MLB, Rosenbaum is known for seeking out cold brew coffee both at home and on the road.

“It is very caffeinated and delicious and tastes like a milkshake.”

The cold brews should prove helpful as the Orioles enter the final stretch of the season. The Orioles were the first team in Major League Baseball to win 70 games and are in a very tight AL East pennant race with the New York Yankees with 29 games to go. Thanks to the efforts of Rosenbaum and Orioles management, the Orioles are on track to potentially win their first World Series since 1983.

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Original Article Published On The Jewish Times

Dean Kremer recently completed his best season ever with the Baltimore Orioles—and the Jewish star-wearing pitcher can tell you about it in Hebrew, if you ask him. The right-handed starter went 8-7 in his third season with the O’s. He pitched 119 innings in 22 games, had 87 strikeouts and a 3.23 ERA, and is thrilled to be in Baltimore. Kremer spoke with the “Baltimore Jewish Times” the day after his final start (a loss) on Oct. 3 against the Toronto Blue Jays.

The 26-year-old playfully reported that it was a “long season” and that it’s “hard to remember” details. While he acknowledged that there were “some fun and some frustrations,” he said the season was strong all around. At one point early on, Kremer was on the IL (injured list). Once revved up, he pitched an incredible 23 straight scoreless innings. His personal highlight of the season was a September game against the Houston Astros where he pitched a complete nine-inning game and gave up only four hits in the 6-0 victory. He faced several star players, including José Altuve and fellow Jewish player Alex Bregman, who went 0 for 4.

Kremer did not have to face the issue of pitching on Rosh Hashanah or in Toronto on Yom Kippur, the last game of the season when the Orioles faced the Blue Jays in a double-header, losing one and winning one to end the season with an 83-79 record, a 31-game improvement over 2021. (Jewish Major Leaguers are often asked whether or not they’d play on the High Holidays.) He noted that “it has never come up—I hope it stays that way.”

The Israeli-American pitcher said he has been enjoying his time in Baltimore: “The city is awesome, and I like the area [near the Inner Harbor] that I live in.”

He did note that “there’s not much time to explore. We spend half of the season away, and when we are home, we have long nights and early mornings.” He pointed out that the local Jewish community has reached out to him, though “I haven’t had any chances to meet them yet. I am looking forward to that in the future.”

Kremer grew up in California to two Israeli parents and traveled to Israel frequently until the demands of baseball got too great. “We went to Israel two times a year until I was in high school—for one or two months in the summer and over the winter.” He and his two brothers celebrated their bar mitzvahs in Tel Aviv, where his grandparents are involved. The Kremers speak Hebrew at home—“most of the time.”

Kremer has had a long history with Team Israel. Peter Kurz, general manager of Israel’s Olympic and National baseball teams, has known Kremer for many years and is proud of his accomplishments. “We are very excited to have Dean Kremer on board for the upcoming World Baseball Championship in March and hope he can be the tournament MVP like he was for Team Israel in his first European championship back in 2014 in Lubliana, Slovenia. He went 2-0 with a 0.00 era! And he was 18 years old at the time.”

Kremer looks back fondly on his past experiences with Team Israel with an uncanny memory for the details of his involvement. “My first experience with them was when I played for Team USA in the 2013 Maccabiah, then I played with them for three tournaments in 2014 and ’15 to help the team advance. Then I was drafted”—the first Israeli drafted to a Major League Baseball team—“and could not play until the World Baseball Qualifiers in 2016 and 2017. Each time, I wore the uniform, I had a blast!”

In March, Kremer will join such current Major Leaguers as Joc Pederson (San Francisco Giants), Harrison Bader (New York Yankees), Kevin Pillar (Los Angeles Dodgers) and fellow pitcher Miami Marlins reliever Richard Bleier. The team will be managed by former star second baseman Ian Kinsler, who played on Israel’s 2020 Olympic baseball team. Team Israel is in Pool D and will face off against Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and an additional team to be determined. All three teams are considered to be tough. Team Israel is currently ranked 20th in the world.

The official announcement of Kremer’s participation on Team Israel in the off-season was made in early October. He said when his Orioles teammates heard the news, they congratulated him—“they were super happy.” He also said they have always been aware of his close ties to Judaism and Israel.

For now, Kremer will enjoy a little R&R before joining Team Israel for the World Baseball Classic qualifiers in March. Looking back to last season and ahead to the next, he offered: “Overall, it was a good one, and I am looking forward to the future.”

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Original Article Published On The JNS

Israeli-American pitcher Dean Kremer, 25, took to the mound in an Orioles-Yankees game that ended with a 7-2 win for the home team. Still, he now holds a place in the record books.

Baltimore Orioles pitcher Dean Kremer holds the distinction of being the only Israeli to pitch at “The House That Ruth Built.”

After Tuesday night’s start against the Yankees in New York City, he reported that “pitching at Yankee Stadium felt pretty good. This time, it was better because there were fans. It was definitely an experience.”

After giving up a leadoff single to DJ LeMahieu, Kremer—the 25-year-old Israeli-American starting pitcher for Baltimore Orioles—was just as quickly knocked off the mound by an Aaron Judge line drive, which Yankees’ radio announcer John Sterling described as a “bullet up the middle” that “drilled him.” Announcer Suzyn Waldman observed that Kremer was “wincing.”

While Orioles manager Brandon Hyde and the team trainer were assessing Kremer’s ability to continue, Waldman shared the young player’s biography, which includes having two Israeli parents who served in the Israel Defense Forces, his spending summers in Israel and his having a history of pitching for Israel’s National Team. Waldman noted Kremer’s impressive record against the Yankees last year when he was called up by the Orioles at the end of the season.

“He had two terrific games against the Yankees,” said Hyde. In those two appearances, Kremer pitched 11 innings, gave up two runs and had 14 strikeouts.

Kremer’s impressive first season earned him a spot in this year’s starting rotation for the Orioles. He struck out seven batters in six innings pitched in his Major League debut last season at Camden Yards in Baltimore. He had 22 strikeouts in 18 innings, while also giving up 12 walks.

Dean Kremer speaking to the media after his start at Yankee Stadium. Source: Screenshot.

After Tuesday night’s scare, which Kremer reported “luckily got me in the meat and not in a bad spot,” he got back on his feet. “It got tight at first, then loosened. I just kept going.”

He struck out the next three batters and threw a total of 80 pitches before leaving with the Orioles trailing 1-0 in the fourth inning. Kremer gave up four walks, five hits and five strikeouts. The Yankees held on to win 7-2 behind starter Gerrit Cole’s 13 strikeouts in seven scoreless innings.

‘Being the first to do something is an incredible honor’

Born and raised in Stockton, Calif., Kremer pitched for the Team USA baseball team in the 2013 Maccabiah Games in Israel, winning a gold medal. In 2014 and 2015, he pitched for Israel in the qualifying rounds for the European Baseball Championship. Also in 2015, he became the first Israeli drafted by a Major League Baseball team; he was drafted by the San Diego Padres in the 38th round but chose not to sign.

He was drafted again by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 14th round of the 2016 MLB draft. He pitched in September 2016 in the qualifier for Israel at the 2017 World Baseball Classic. The Dodgers traded him to the Orioles in 2018, where he led all Minor League pitchers in strikeouts.

Oon the mound for the Baltimore Orioles. Credit: Courtesy of Baltimore Orioles.

Cody Decker, who played for the San Diego Padres and various other Major League teams (mostly with Minor League affiliates) as well as for Team Israel, and is known for bringing the team’s mascot, “The Mensch on the Bench,” from the United States to Asia for the World Baseball Classic, is proud of his Team Israel teammate. “Dean is a great kid with a live arm and bright future—and when he grows it out, he has GREAT hair!”

Kremer is proud of his Team Israel experience and of being the first Israeli citizen in the MLB. “It means everything to me,” he said. “Just being the first to do something is an incredible honor.”

He noted that he values his time with Team Israel. “Being around those guys—the guys on the team were much older or a few years older—with Big League experience helped me get to where I am now. It was a pretty unbelievable experience.”

Peter Kurz, Israel Association of Baseball (IAB) President and general manager of Team Israel, loved having Kremer on the team and is “very excited to have Dean open up the season against the Yankees.”

Kurz, whose Team Israel is preparing for this July’s Tokyo Olympics (rescheduled from 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic) added that “Dean is on Team Israel’s extended roster, but as a 26-man roster MLB player, he will not be eligible to play for us in the Olympics. We want to wish him the best of luck in the upcoming season and his career.”

Hyde said he is proud of his starter and sees great potential in the young player. “He pitched well and battled through. He threw a lot of pitches and ran out of gas in the fourth inning.”

Still, he said he is pleased that Kremer has four pitches, and admires his “starter mentality and toughness” and feels he “will continue to improve.”

Announcer Sterling pointed out that Kremer’s Yankee Stadium pitching debut took place on the same day in Yankees history when Jewish baseball player Ron Blomberg became the first designated hitter for MLB. On April 6, 1973, at Boston’s Fenway Park, Blomberg was walked by Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant with the bases loaded in the first inning. The bat he used now stands on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Baltimore Orioles Israeli-American pitcher Dean Kremer. Credit: Johnny Douglas/Baltimore Orioles.
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