Israeli Baseball Shows Off Cincinnati’s Jewish Talent
On Thursday evening, July 16, the smell of popcorn filled the Mayerson JCC as Cincinnati’s Jewish baseball community gathered to watch Israel Swings for Gold. Before the lights went down, David Harris looked across a room filled with Hebrew day school alumni, JCC softball players and supporters of Israel and called the program “a true Cincinnati Jewish community story.” The documentary followed Team Israel’s run at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but the story on screen kept circling back to Cincinnati.
The evening’s featured guest, Nate Fish, played baseball at the University of Cincinnati alongside fellow Bearcat, Red Sox star and Adath Israel bar mitzvah boy Kevin Youkilis – whose dad is a well-known pitcher for the JCC Softball League. Fish later played shortstop for the Tel Aviv Lightning during the Israel Baseball League’s only season in 2007 and made aliyah in 2013. He served as Team Israel’s third-base coach at the Tokyo Olympics and now manages the national team and leads Israel Baseball Americas. Fish was joined for the post-film discussion by national team lead coach Dan Cohen after they led an all-day baseball clinic for JCC campers.
The visit is also an acknowledgement that Cincinnati is still producing future talent for Team Israel’s future runs. Akiva Epstein, considered to be on the short list for LA, attended Hebrew Day School and Rockwern Academy. He spent nearly a decade with the JCC Blue Jays.
Wyatt Shaw is another Cincinnati player on Team Israel’s prospective roster. The former Princeton Vikings catcher and Adath Israel bar mitzvah boy spent his freshman year at Valparaiso University and is playing this summer for the Danville Otterbots in the MLB-supported Appalachian League.
Cincinnati’s connection even extends to the Reds. Alon Leichman, raised on Kibbutz Gezer, became the first Israeli-born coach in Major League Baseball when he joined the Reds as assistant pitching coach in 2023. Gezer is home to one of Israel’s few regulation baseball diamonds.
The scarcity of proper fields remains one of the biggest obstacles to developing the sport in Israel. During the presentation, Fish pulled up a map of Beit Shemesh and pointed to a paved lot in the heart of the city where children are already trying to play.
JNF-USA’s Project Baseball is working with the Israel Association of Baseball to transform that space into the Bet Shemesh Sports Complex, with a regulation field, two youth fields, dugouts, bullpens, batting cages, lighting and spectator seating. The stadium will bear the name of Cincinnati’s Jewish community.
For Steve Zawatski, a member of the JCC softball league, that made the project tangible. He said he felt good about the evening because he could see exactly where the community’s money was going. AJ Goldhoff, who previously worked with Israel Baseball through Onward Israel, was glad to reconnect with Fish.
The film also showed the less visible costs of representing Israel. Players described heavy security precautions in Tokyo and the antisemitism they encountered. Fish said the danger surrounding the team’s 2025 international competition became so severe that players remained confined to their hotel for two weeks.
“We’ve normalized it,” Fish said, “but it’s unfortunate that we have to go through all of that.”
Yet Fish also offered one criticism of the documentary: it talked too much about antisemitism. He said some of the team’s best experiences came through the respect and friendship shown by Dominican players. Those moments mattered too, and a forthcoming film about the team’s 2025 experience will continue that story.
Team Israel finished 2–2 at the 2026 World Baseball Classic, earning automatic qualification for the 2030 tournament. Fish said the team’s next competitions begin in September as it builds toward another Olympic appearance in Los Angeles in 2028.
That future is what Les Sandler hopes Cincinnati will help build. After serving on the Jewish Federation’s Local Allocations Committee, Sandler founded the Israel Baseball U.S.A. Booster Club. Its first gathering drew about 60 people who wanted, as he put it, “to do something, not necessarily monetarily, but be a participant in something.”
During the program, JNF Cincinnati’s Nina Paul announced that Les and Renee Sandler will receive the organization’s Tree of Life Award on Nov. 2 for their contributions to Israeli baseball.
There is a remarkable reversal in all of this. A generation ago, Cincinnati baseball was stained by Marge Schott, the disgraced baseball mogul who insisted Hitler had been “good in the beginning.” Today, Cincinnati is helping develop players for Team Israel and putting its Jewish community’s name on a ballpark in Beit Shemesh. Schott made antisemitism part of Cincinnati baseball’s national reputation. Jewish Cincinnati is answering that legacy with athletes, coaches and a field where Israeli children can build something better in its place. It is difficult to imagine a future Marge Schott would have hated more or one Cincinnati should be prouder to claim.
