L’Shana Tova to all. Today is Rosh Hashanah, celebrating the Jewish new year.

I will be spending the day in synagogue and with my family. However, I wanted to leave a post about Hank Greenberg and the holiday that actually had a sports media component.

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With Rosh Hashanah nearing in 1934, the Detroit slugger was debating whether or not to play. “The team was fighting for first place and I was probably the only batter in the lineup that was not in a slump,” Greenberg said. “I was literally carrying the club with my hitting.”

Greenberg wasn’t all that observant as a Jew, but he always promised his parents he wouldn’t play on a High Holiday.

According to Tigers’ radio announcer Ernie Harwell, a rabbi in Detroit looked in the Talmud and found a reference to young Jews playing in the streets of Jerusalem during Rosh Hashanah. A headline in a local paper read, “Talmud Clears Greenberg for Holiday Play”

Greenberg decided to play and hit two home runs in the Tigers’ 2-1 win over the White Sox. On the front of the Detroit Free Press the next day, the headline read, “Happy New Year” written in Hebrew.

“Years later, I heard that the rabbi knew that the Talmud really said that it was the Roman children who played on Rosh Hashanah, but the rabbi didn’t tell Hank that part of it,” sports broadcaster Dick Schaap said.

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Indeed, I don’t think I would have gotten that interpretation from my Rabbi, Vernon Kurtz.