Israeli citizen Dean Kremer was the first Israeli to be drafted by a major league baseball (MLB) team and on Sunday, became the first Israeli ever to pitch and win a game, and he did it on his debut against the famed New York Yankees.
On Saturday night, Orioles general manager Mike Elias and manager Brandon Hyde called Kremer, at the time, an Orioles’ pitching prospect, and asked if he wanted to pitch the next day against the Yankees. Kremer responded in the affirmative and the result was history in he making.
Kremer made a stunning debut and became the first Israeli to ever pitch in an MLB game and also the first Israeli to win a game. But he did more than simply win, he dominated a tremendous team.
Kremer outpitched New York’s two-time All-Star Masahiro Tanaka over the course of 6 innings. He surrendered only one hit and one run with three walks and seven strikeouts against a hard-hitting lineup.
Kremer struck out the Yankees leadoff batter DJ LeMahieu as well as their home run leader Luke Voit. He then retired veteran Brett Gardner for a perfect 1-2-3 opening frame. In the bottom of the first, Baltimore’s DJ Stewart lined a two-run homer off Tanaka and gave Kremer the lead which he would then never lose.
Kremer, “It’s a dream come true. We practice every day for years to get to this point. Just to have had it is a dream come true.”
In his first major league outing, Kremer threw 88 pitches and led the Orioles to a series win over the Yankees.
While Kremer is the first Israeli citizen to be drafted in baseball and the first one to pitch in the majors, he is not the first Israeli citizen to play in the majors. That designation belongs to Ryan Lavarnway, who obtained Israeli citizenship in November in order to play for Team Israel at the Tokyo Olympics this year. The Olympics, however, were postponed to next summer due to the coronavirus. Lavarnway was called up to the Miami Marlins in August, making him the first Israeli to play, but he was later designated for assignment.
According to a report in the CBS affiliate in Baltimore, Kremer told reporters that he takes his Jewishness seriously and would not pitch on Yom Kippur.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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10 Responses
And we’re happy, encouraged, comforted, proud about this because?
LET’S GO O’S!!!
Nice payos. He needs to work on his beard though.
He’s an American born in the United States to Israeli parents and brought up in the United States.
There are many attempts to introduce baseball in Israel, but they focus on hiring Americans to play in (or for) Israel, rather than starting with building up youth leagues. When you have a player who was raised in Israel, and learned baseball playing in Israel, who then enters professional baseball, you can claim there is an Israeli major league player (something unlikely since increasing young Israelis are likely to be Shomer Shabbos, which precludes playing American-style professional baseball, but that’s another matter).
Thank you so much YWN. Such Chizuk before the ‘Heiliger Teg’.
ONLY YWN WOULD POST SUCH A POST. Y DOES A HIMESHE YID NEED TO HER ALL THIS DISSECTING NEWS ????
I don’t see why this would be of particular interest to Torah-observant Jews. The Zionists usurped the holy name Israel and established their blasphemous state in defiance of what was an overwhelming consensus of the foremost rabbinic sages.
This has nothing to do with Yiddishkeit or Politics that affects Yidden.
Very nice!! Enough with all the hate. If it doesn’t interest you skip it and go to the next article.
i think its just funny ywn only got around to writing about the game 3 days after:)