Pirates staffer, pitcher for Team Israel heads to Tokyo Olympics
Jeremy Bleich, a left-handed pitcher who has been working analytics for the Pittsburgh Pirates, will be headed to Japan to play ball for Israel's national team.
Jeremy Bleich played professional baseball for 11 years before switching to pitching analytics for the Pittsburgh Pirates coaching staff. Now, the left-handed pitcher and veteran of two MLB games, is preparing to head to Japan with Team Israel to compete in the 2021 Olympics.
The upcoming Olympics in Tokyo will mark the first time in 45 years that an Israeli team has qualified. In 1976, Israel’s soccer team competed in the Olympics in Montreal.
Bleich — who pitched for 14 different teams before finally playing his first game in the majors for the Oakland Athletics in 2018 — began working for the Pirates in 2020.
Joining the Pirates staff “has been a good transition,” Bleich, 34, told the Chronicle. “It’s been a great opportunity to look behind the curtain and see what baseball operations are like and how Major League Baseball functions, not only on the field, but also off the field. The whole Pirates organization has supported me on my quest to Team Israel.”
Bleich pitched for Team Israel at the 2017 World Baseball Classic, the 2019 European Baseball Championship and the 2019 Europe/Africa Olympic Qualifier, which Israel won to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.
Depending on the tournament, players need to satisfy certain requirements to play on Team Israel. For the Olympics, Bleich explained, players must be Israeli citizens, so he and several other American Jews made aliyah, getting dual citizenship to play in the Tokyo Olympics.
Pitching for Team Israel “was a perfect match for me to stick to my roots,” said Bleich, whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Team Israel, he added, provides a space to connect his passion for baseball with his Jewish identity, joining teammates with similar backgrounds.
“Joining the Israeli Olympic team allowed me to be proud of my family and the path that my family has taken, while also playing baseball.”
The dynamic on Team Israel and the Pittsburgh Pirates is “totally different,” Bleich noted. “The Pirates are a Major League team and play 162 games. The Olympics is a six-team bracket pool play which can go any which way. The Israeli team is probably not built for 162 games, but we do have the opportunity to do damage in a short sprint. All of us are resilient, which I think works in our favor.”
Team Israel is supported by the Jewish National Fund-USA, which created a baseball field between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for national games and for training Team Israel, according to Lou Rosenberg, the lead professional in charge of JNF-USA’s Project Baseball. JNF-USA also raised funds to help finance Team Israel’s trip to the Olympics, he said.
“The guys are an amazing group,” Rosenberg said. “They’re bonded. They know that this is an amazing opportunity to create more of a positive international outlook on Israel.”
Rosenberg said he told Team Israel’s players to imagine the significance of seeing the Israeli flag on Olympics medals.
“It would make an amazing statement to the world to combat antisemitic and anti-Zionist hatred,” he said. PJC
Sarah Abrams can be reached at sabrams@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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