*this true yarn has been republished, and originally appeared as part of National Lampoon/Rivalfish’s official coverage of Bonnaroo ’06
by Tello Real
In June 2006, Rivalfish traveled to the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival to explore the connection between music and sports — from the perspectives of both fans and performers. Our findings are dedicated to Hunter S. Thompson aka Dr. Gonzo aka Raul Duke, who never passed on an opportunity to cover sports, music, or social change, especially when they all landed in the same story.
Major League Baseball’s Access to the Show competition at MLB’s Authentic Collection batting cages was going to be a real hoot, as we say in the world of Subterranean Homesick Sports Journalism. A bunch of atrophied musicians taking their crack at fifteen dirty yellow cage balls flung their way at a brisk 55 mph in the pleasantly branded batting cages MLB plopped backstage. I’d seen more graceful casket-droppings than I was sure to see with this legion of people who are actually cool enough in the eyes of the opposite sex to never have to worry about being good at sports.
Nonetheless, these artists were tasked with picking up a bat in the sweltering Tennessee heat and swinging away for another obnoxious promotion their manager annoyed them into attending. No line drives, shots to the gap, or even hard grounders were expected to occur in these Authentic Collection cages any time soon.
But MLB knew this. That’s why they decided to score the contest on mere ball/bat contact. How-many-times-my-bat-hit-the-ball/How-many-times-the-machine-flung-the-ball-sortafast-at-my-bat. Easy math.
In the end, an expected-but-still-hilarious stat emerge. 0-for-15 for every one of those endomorphic Bonnaroo-performing hippies and hipsters, with the exception of the only three real men of the rotten group: Phil Pollard of Band of Humans, Vince Amico of Moe, and Jeremy Plog of Jackie Greene. I could have told you from Day 1 that those three would either foul off or make good contact with all fifteen of those heaters. And they sure as hell did.
But that story was flatter than my seventh grade girlfriend’s brother. I needed to use my Access to the Show to answer a much bigger question: Why are there so few Jews in Major League Baseball and why are Jews unanimously viewed to be the least athletic of the world’s Believers? Who better to ask than Bonnaroo’s authority on All Things Jewish: Lewis “You Remember Me From The Daily Show” Black.
As I should have expected, Lewis Black further perpetuated the terrible stereotype that Jews couldn’t hit, pich, or punt themselves out of mandatory military service if their lives depended on it. I had asked him the eternal question backstage at Bonnaroo’s comedy tent, and he had bluntly responded, “You already know the answer, you’re a Jew. Jews aren’t good at anything.”
A simple “no” would have sufficed, but why was it? Did the ego-deflating generalization stem from some kind of evidence showing Jews lack the physiological or mental wiring to compete at 
the highest level of athletics? Or maybe their athletic ineptitude stems from the fact that Jewish families traditionally push academics, rather than athletics, to their little Iras, Aris, and Sols?
“But I won’t get on the Prom Court or ever have a girl like me,” their little mensches must surely wail, Wall-style.
“But you’ll be dating a supermodel when you’re President of Talent Development at MGM after you’ve gotten your MBA at Dartmouth and your Law degree at Stanford by the age of 26,” Mr. and Mrs. Hinklestein surely must reply.
But whatever the root of the unathletic stereotype, we can’t blame Mr. Black. My question was ridiculous. He had to counter with a laugher. He has a career to further and a family to feed. He’s trained in the art of being the funniest in the conversation at all times. However, a large part of me wishes he didn’t have to go publicly set back his own people further than anyone without a side-part and a thing for tall blondes in the past hundred years.
To be honest, I had given up on my quest to answer this age old debate after my encounter with that Bigot Black. But then this gem below arrived in my inbox. Though I had been there to cover it, I had apparently missed the moment of Chosen Person Vindication while “covering” my lungs with a helping of cash crop or a set of hand-painted hippie boobs with my eyes. Look and you will see…….
This is not a doctored photograph. This photograph was taken by the esteemed Brad Hodge of the Nashville City Paper at the aforementioned MLB Authentic Collection batting cages.
All the stories of Jewish athletic success in the world weren’t going to answer my question and certainly weren’t going to change the existing stereotype. We needed a picture to act as a symbol. A symbol comprised of two smaller symbols: An Hasidic Jewish man with traditional facial hair symbolizing “utmost devotion to the Jewish religion,” and an attempt to hit a round ball with a rounded surface, symbolizing “the hardest thing to do in sports.”
While papers and novels and essays get skimmed, paintings and pictures get remembered. Take The Bible, for instance. I hear it’s got a lot of good stuff for people of many religions, but I bet neither you nor I can quote much of it from memory, or give me a list of the Books in order. But I bet you can picture, draw, and label DaVinci’s Last Supper with your eyes closed and whiskey on your breath. My grandma made up this saying once, “a picture’s worth a thousand words.” Well this picture of Matthew “Matisyahu”(Hebrew for gift of God) Miller with the Prayer Strings of his Tzizit-Tallit Katan dangling from beneath his traditional white tennis polo is worth thousands of years of redemption from Religious persecution. And you better f*cking believe there’s a Kippah under that snazzy helmet as his peyot sway with every swing.
Not since the photograph of Rosa Parks sitting on the front of the bus, as a white man sits behind her and tries oh so hard to look unaffected as he peers beyond the horizon, has a 
photograph so utterly represented profound social change. Now, when people think Jewish Athleticism, they’ll forever conjure this picture of Matis. And it’s hard to argue that Matisyahu’s emblematic swing would bring anything short of an opposite-field two-bagger on the field of play. Jewish children will no longer feel like they have to become really rich to make up for their lack of field-savvy, looks, or machismo. The stereotype is soon to be dead forever. Thank you, Matisyahu. Transforming a Societal Ill with one swing of the aluminum is more noteworthy than any on-field accomplishment by anyone not-named Jackie Robinson.
And for that, he should get laid. I know girlsl. Matisyahu will surely shun the advances of any converted athlete-groupie, no longer a slave to the excess he enjoyed while traveling the country as a middle-class suburban dreadheaded Phish Phan. Thanks to his conversion to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community, he is now a clean and sober and happily married man, supposedly unmoved by even the best set of Emo, Hippie, or Jersey-Chaser Cans. Therefore, he’ll do something for you Chasers that you’ve needed done for a long time: He’ll help you rediscover your faith. He’ll pick you up off your knees, wipe off your chin, and bring you home to Mommy and Step-Daddy. He may even do for your what a Hasidic Rabbi in Washington Square Park once did for him, and bring you over to the Chosen Side. We can only hope. L’Chaim!
