Rabbi Yosef Langer is the leader of Chabad of San Francisco. In 2006, an executive for the San Francisco Giants invited him to blow the shofar behind home plate during the third inning on Jewish Heritage Night. The fans appreciated the blasts so much that he was invited to do it again three innings later. Club officials dubbed Langer the “Rally Rabbi” and included his likeness the next year on this rabbi bobblehead doll (for those interested in seeing the Rally Rabbi, the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum is in Milwaukee).
Former Major League Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti once wrote: “[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone.”
Hopefully, not this year. Let’s go Blue Jays.