Israeli Baseball Expose

TabloidBaby reports:

World-renowned journalist Elli Wohlgelernter– known here as Our Man Elli In Israel– is already causing shockwaves around the sportsworld with his exposé of the new Israel Baseball League. In this sidebar story, he explores one of the most embarrassing incidents of this first season: the outburst and ouster of one of the league’s most high-profile figures, team manager and former Major League pitcher Ken Holtzman:

by ELLI WOHLGELERNTER

In an interview on July 20 with the Israeli Web portal Walla!, Petah Tikva manager and former Major Leaguer Ken Holtzman let loose with a sweeping broadside against the Israel Baseball League, sparing no one.

He criticized the baseball fields: “They would reach the level of high schools in our country”; the teams: “Chosen at random, and in a strange manner”; the Israeli players: “There are no good Israeli players”; the other players: “According to what I can see, none of the players can reach even semi-pro baseball in the United States… the really good player would never come here”; and the Israeli fan: “There is no chance that baseball will succeed in Israel. People here relate to baseball the way people in America relate to soccer. They see it as something very boring, and it will never catch on… you can’t make a big impression because there is no culture of baseball, and the facilities are the worse possible.”

A season of frustration all came pouring out, and against league organizers as well.

“They wanted to make the league work very very quickly,” Holtzman said. “The main point to them was that there would be a league, that they could then go to Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball [and a member of the league’s advisory committee], to tell him that ‘we provided the goods,’ that there is also baseball in Israel. But they opened the league a year too soon. It makes no sense that they would sit in the Eastern United States doing publicity and creating the league, and at the same time, there is nobody here supervising. Look at this field,” he said, referring to Sportek Field in Tel Aviv. “The league opened, and this field still wasn’t ready. They pushed off 25 games because of scandalous management. They should have waited.”