Talking baseball at Temple Israel

Jon Pessah discusses playing for the Yankees, sports writing, steroids and Yogi

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Growing up in Bayside, Queens in the 1950s, Jon Pessah thought he was going to play center field for the New York Yankees.

Like many young men, Pessah didn’t have the talent of a Mickey Mantle, so he put himself into the next best place: the press box as a sportswriter which gave him a great seat to many of sports’ biggest news stories and games in the past 40-plus years.

Pessah, 64, a founding editor of ESPN the Magazine, a former sports editor for Newsday and the Hartford Courant, spoke at Temple Israel of Lawrence on Feb. 17, as part of the synagogue’s Jewish Experience Lunch and Lecture Series. He also directed the investigative team for ESPN’s publication and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Applying a rambling, conversational speaking style he discussed a range of topicsthat evolved from his 2015 book “The Game, Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball’s Power Breakers,” a 650-page tome that recounted baseball’s last 20 years.

“I scared my girlfriend in 1978, I had the TV and radio on and had several sports sections spread out in front of me,” said Pessah, who lives in Smithtown. Despite the fright, they married. “Covering sports gives me a chance to write about things I like to write about,” Pessah added.

Through his 90-minute talk, Pessah recounted how George W. Bush, onetime a part owner of the Texas Rangers wanted to be baseball commissioner, but Bud Selig out maneuvered him. Bush became president instead.

Reporting heavily on the steroid use in major league baseball Pessah recalled a conversation with a player who told him he wouldn’t rat out a teammate, he wouldn’t hurt his team and there is just too much money to be made, about why the powers-that-be ignored the issue. Pessah said he would for vote for steroid users to be in the Hall of Fame, but he would not vote for Pete Rose, who bet on baseball games.

What amazes him about this diversion called sports, is that, “We don’t repair our roads, we don’t repair our schools, but we spend billions on sports stadiums.”
He believes that baseball writers are “different from other sportswriters because they thought they were going to the game,” at the major league level.

After all the “jousting” Pessah said he went through with sources while researching The Game, he said he wanted his next book to be fun. He will now focus his novel-like writing style on Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. “I wanted to do something fun and put a smile on my face and other’s people’s faces,” Pessah said.

There are two more speakers on the series schedule: On Friday, March 17, photographer Marissa Scheinfeld will display and talk about photographs of the Borscht Belt, the Catskill Mountain resorts, known as America’s Jewish vacationland. On Monday, April 24, Steve Katz, a founding member of The Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears will speak about his rock-n-roll career.

For information about the lunches and lectures contact Alan Freedman at (516) 239-1140 or alan@templeisrael-lawrence.org.