Today is the first full day of what was my favorite Jewish holiday as a child: Passover, which commemorates the Jews who escaped slavery in ancient Egypt.
This moment of celebration helped me remember a conversation I had a month ago with my friend Noam in which I said, “Hank Greenberg would have been one of the 100 greatest baseball players if it hadn’t been for World War II.”
Noam expressed some skepticism, so I decided to dig deeper into the numbers. Turns out I undersold Greenberg; he was one of the greatest hitters of all time and gives Sandy Koufax a chance to become the greatest Jewish baseball player of all time.
For those who don’t know, Greenberg was the first truly major Jewish sports star in America. He faced many abuses at a time when Hitler was rising to power in Europe. Long before Koufax skipped Yom Kippur, Greenberg did so for the Detroit Tigers during the 1934 pennant race. Yom Kippur is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, when fans atone for their sins from the past year and not They eat during the day.
Greenberg’s religion had already been front-page news when the Detroit Free Press, about a week earlier, ran a big headline in Hebrew (probably the first time a major English-language newspaper had done so) when he interpreted the Rosh theme. Hashanah (the Jewish holiday). New Year). The headline was complimentary: “And to you, Mr. Greenberg, Tiger fans say: ‘L’shana Tova Tikatevu!’ which means ‘Happy New Year’.”
Greenberg deserved so much attention. He finished sixth in MVP voting that year. The following year, in 1935, he won the award, as the Tigers were victorious in six games in the World Series. He would go on to win another MVP in 1940, before joining the military just a few games into the 1941 season.
Greenberg could have easily left the U.S. Army after 1941 because he was honorably discharged and Congress released those men 28 and older from the service. However, he re-enlisted after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December of that year. Greenberg served 47 months total, more than any other major league player, including overseas action.
Greenberg returned to the diamond in 1945, hitting two home runs in another World Series victory with the Tigers, but he did not play a full season again until 1946. By that time, at age 35, he had already far surpassed most The baseball players. major. That year, he still hit a major league-leading 44 home runs; Nobody else made it to 40.
Greenberg would retire after the 1947 season, but not before becoming one of the first baseball players to cheer on Jackie Robinson during his inaugural season. The 1955 World Series champion and Greenberg would remain friends until Robinson’s death in 1972.
The fact that Greenberg was a hero to young Jewish baseball fans (like my father), a great American and incredible human being, is not in doubt.
These images provided by the U.S. Postal Service show the four 39-cent postage stamps honoring baseball sluggers. From left are Roy Campenella of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers. (AP Photo/USPS)
What I fear is sometimes forgotten is how good Greenberg was because he missed what was essentially four major seasons serving in the military during World War II.
Greenberg remains one of 10 baseball players to ever hit 58 home runs in a single season. He led the major leagues in home runs four times, putting him in the top 10 for this achievement. Greenberg probably would have approached 500 home runs if he hadn’t hit, if his career hadn’t been interrupted by the war. He would almost certainly have reached the 400 mark.
Only three players hit 500 home runs before 1960, and only 28 have done so through 2024. Only six players hit 400 home runs before 1960, while Greenberg’s 331 were still good enough for 12th before 1960. Heck , was a good enough 50 count before the 1990s, when performance-enhancing drug use became widespread in MLB’s steroid era until the mid-2000s.
His 15.69 at-bats per home run currently rank 32nd all-time.
But what made Greenberg truly great was not that he simply achieved power; he got on base at an impressive rate.
Greenberg’s on-base percentage was .412, ranking 25th (as of this writing) among players with at least 5,000 plate appearances. He ranks 15th among those who played in the last century.
In fact, he is one of 21 players who has hit at least 300 home runs and has an on-base percentage of at least .400.
Greenberg didn’t just hit home runs and get on base. He also scored a lot of doubles. Greenberg twice compiled at least 50 doubles in a season, which were both times he led the league in statistics.
Not surprisingly, his on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS), a statistic that combines getting on base with hitting for power, was out of this world. His career 1,017 are sixth all-time for someone with at least 5,000 plate appearances. Adjusting for the ballparks he played in and the fact that Greenberg played in a hitter-friendly era, his OPS+ (which is an OPS adjusted for external factors, designed to provide a context-neutral number) was 159, or 59% better than the league. average, and he ranks 15th all-time among those with at least 5,000 plate appearances.
Bottom line: Greenberg is one of the greatest hitters to ever grace America’s pastime.
The only real weakness in Greenberg’s game was that he didn’t contribute defensively because he played first base (a less demanding position) for most of his career.
However, there is a statistic that combines offense and defense, considering Greenberg missed many potentially good years due to his time in the military. It’s called wins above replacement in seven years, or WAR7 (yes, there are a lot of very specific statistics used to analyze baseball, it’s part of what makes the sport so great).
Peeling paint is seen in the Detroit Tigers’ home dugout at Tiger Stadium in Detroit on Thursday, August 2, 2007. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
Wins Above Replacement is a statistic that attempts to account for every part of a player’s game, while seven means a player’s best seven seasons. For someone like Greenberg, the seventh part is key because of the time lost due to his military service.
Greenberg ranks 62nd among all position players in this metric since Major League Baseball began in the 1870s, according to Baseball-Reference (and different outlets calculate WAR7 slightly differently). Which means he is undoubtedly one of the all-time greats, even taking into account his defense.
And while I would normally advise against comparing position players and pitchers in WAR7 because they are calculated very differently, I can’t help but point out that Greenberg’s WAR7 (46.5) is very similar to Koufax’s (46.0). The “Left Arm of God” had an abbreviated career, like Greenberg’s, although Koufax’s, ironically because of his nickname, was due to arm problems.
I think most would agree that as long as you’re mentioned in the same sentence as Koufax, you did something very well.
In Greenberg’s case, he did a lot of good both on and off the field.