There’s no question that playing sports has great value. Physical health, discipline, teamwork, competition – these are real things, and they can enrich a person’s character and well-being. A good game can be a powerful outlet, a metaphor for life, and even a chinuch opportunity.
But following ports is another matter entirely.
To be a fan is to identify. To invest emotionally in strangers, teams, and outcomes that have nothing to do with you. You feel pride when they win, shame when they lose – as if you had a stake. But you don’t. You didn’t train. You didn’t compete. You didn’t contribute. You just watched. So, what exactly are you celebrating? Or mourning?
It’s all illusion. The players aren’t from your neighborhood. They’re often hired from across the globe. The team is just a business. The connection you feel is manufactured by marketing departments. You, the fan, are the product.
And even if there is some social benefit in being part of a “fan community,” a frum Jew already lives in the most real, rich communities imaginable – his family, his shul, his yeshiva, his chavrutot, his nation, his people. Why borrow a shallower, faker identity?
Let’s be clear: sports fandom is not evil. But it’s a distortion of your emotional energy. It hijacks the part of your soul meant for achdut, for Am Yisrael, for Torat chayim, and redirects it toward a false narrative and an empty cause.
Play the game. Don’t live in the bleachers.
Rabbi Eliyahu Raful serves as Rav and Rosh Kollel of the Sephardi Beth Midrash at the White Shul in Far Rockaway, NY. He studied at Yeshivot Ner Yisroel and Chevron, and received semicha from Yeshiva Torah Vodaas under the guidance of the late Rabbi Yisrael Belsky, zt”l.
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There is a popular parsha newsletter that too often presents hashkafas that are not aligned with the mainstream hashkafas of the community I live in. I refer to the Toras Avigdor parsha sheet. In the Pekudei 5785 edition, the author of that newsletter riles against those who wear baseball caps. He writes about “meshuganas” who celebrate hitting home runs and describes the heads covered by baseball caps as “empty.”
I believe, as do my rebbeim and many gedolei Yisrael, that the hashkafa which mocks those who admire or even take an interest in baseball is mistaken. Watching baseball is a wholesome and safe pastime. It is clean and appropriate. Of course, studying Gemara is a higher value than baseball. But as a use of one’s downtime, baseball is a great choice.
I love taking my children to ball games. We have spent summer days in stadiums both inside New York City and far beyond. I find baseball to be a wonderful way to bond with my children. I love watching the joy on their faces when they catch a ball, and I adore the way they can recite statistics in unbelievable detail. Because of my children, I have renewed my interest in baseball, an interest that lay dormant for dozens of years. I now enjoy watching baseball games as my children do. It is a wonderful way to connect. It seems to me foolhardy to mock, put down, or make fun of interest in baseball.
If anything, as Rabbi Shalom Carmy notes in an introduction to the journal Tradition from Summer 2009, attention to baseball and sports in general can be very positive. We live in a time where it is common for yeshiva boys and others in the community to adopt an attitude of bittul, derision and disparagement. For too many yeshiva boys and girls (and their parents and cousins) nothing is good enough. The sports fan, however, lives in a state of admiration. He or she recognizes talent and appreciates that there are skills that are beyond what he or she can attain. This attitude is very positive and should certainly be cultivated.
Rabbi Ezra Schwartz is a Rosh Yeshiva at Rabbi Issac Elchanan Theological Seminary, where he holds the Harry Rabin Chair in Talmud and Jewish Law. He also serves as the Associate Director of the Semicha Program and teaches halacha at GPATS.
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How do we know that baseball is G-d’s favorite sport?
Because the Torah starts with “In the Big Inning.”
Solomon Schechter gave the following advice to a young scholar when he joined the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary: “You can’t be a rabbi in America without understanding baseball.” Great American Rabbis have exhibited passion for the Great American Pastime. It is said that Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, zt”l, could name the starting lineup of the 1945 Chicago Cubs. Rav Lichtenstein reportedly explained to a group of teenagers the difference between a minhag and a halacha as the difference between a football field and a baseball field. Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, zt”l, of the Mirrer Yeshiva was the starting centerfielder on his high school baseball team. And Rabbi Aharon Rakeffet, shlita, has lectured extensively about Judaism and baseball. I recommend listening to his eulogy for Joe DiMaggio, available on YUTorah.org.
There are many theories concerning the connections between Judaism and baseball. I’d like to suggest two. First, baseball is about “coming home.” The winning team is the one that rounds the bases and reaches home more times. Judaism is also about returning home: teshuva is about returning to Hashem, geulah is about returning to our homeland.
Second, baseball emphasizes the importance of teamwork. Unlike basketball or hockey, a baseball team cannot rely on one superstar. Everybody has to contribute in their own way if the team is going to win. We are all working towards the same goals: Kiddush Hashem, emulating G-d, making the world a better place. We each have our talents and abilities. We move forward by working together, each in our unique way.
John Sexton, former President of NYU and author of the book Baseball as a Road to God, once said, “The similarities between baseball and religion abound. The ballpark as cathedral; saints and sinners; the curses and blessings. But then what I’m arguing is beyond that surface level, there’s a fundamental similarity between baseball and religion which goes to the capacity of baseball to cause human beings, in a context they don’t think of as religious, to break the plane of ordinary existence into the plane of extraordinary existence.”
With the proper perspective attending a baseball game can be an opportunity for growth and inspiration.
Rabbi Yosef Weinstock is Senior Rabbi at Young Israel of Hollywood – Ft. Lauderdale.
